Artist - illustrator Konstantin Pavlovich Rotov (109 works)

Konstantin Pavlovich Rotov (February 19 (March 4, new style) 1902, Rostov-on-Don - January 16, 1959, Moscow) - Soviet graphic artist, cartoonist, illustrator of many famous books, including: “The Adventures of Captain Vrungel ", "Old Man Hottabych", "Uncle Styopa", "The Three Little Pigs", "The Golden Calf" and many others, artist of the magazine "Crocodile". In 2009, a personal exhibition of works by Konstantin Rotov was held at the State Literary Museum

Rotov Konstantin Pavlovich was born on February 19 (March 4), 1902 in the city of Rostov-on-Don in the family of a Don Cossack. Graduated from the Rostov Art School.

Already in 1916, his first cartoons were published in the Petrograd magazine Beach. Even before the establishment of Soviet power on the Don, Konstantin Rotov’s drawings were published in the Don Wave magazine and the Rostov Rech newspaper.

Since 1920, after the establishment of Soviet power on the Don, he began working in the Rostov Don-ROSTA, Political Education, and the Rostov branch of the State Publishing House.
In 1921, he was admitted to the Petrograd Academy at the Faculty of Graphics, but as Rotov himself wrote in his autobiography, “I did not study, since at that time formalistic trends that were incomprehensible and alien to me prevailed among the Academy’s teachers.”

In 1921, Rotov moved to Moscow. From 1922 to 1940 he worked at the Krokodil magazine. In those same years, he was published in many magazines and newspapers: Pravda, Rabochaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Gudok, Searchlight, Ogonyok, Smekhach, 30 Days, Lapot and etc.

In 1939, based on a sketch by Konstantin Rotov, a panel was created for the Soviet pavilion at the New York exhibition.

Konstantin Pavlovich created illustrations for the books: Samuel Marshak - About the Hippopotamus, 1958; Ilf and Petrov - Golden Calf, 1931; Agnia Barto - The house has moved, 1938; Andrey Nekrasov - The Adventures of Captain Vrungel, 1939; Lazar Lagin - Old Man Hottabych, 1940; Sergei Mikhalkov - Uncle Styopa, 1957; Sergei Mikhalkov - Three Little Pigs, 1958; Valentin Kataev - A lonely sail turns white, and to many others.

In June 1940, the most difficult and tragic part of the biography of Konstantin Rotov began; he was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in forced labor camps and stayed there until January 4, 1948.

In the city of Solikamsk, where Rotov served his first term, working as an artist, his talent was further developed - he created many paintings, a large number of which are stored in the Solikamsk State Museum of Local Lore. With the same talent with which he created his graphic images, he also created his paintings on which he conveyed not only the severity and grandeur of northern nature, but also the mood prevailing among the Gulag prisoners.

The artist painted some of his paintings for his fellow prisoners. One of them, a prisoner of ALZHIR, and then serving exile with Rotov in Solikamsk, Olga Ivanovna Filimonova (1905-1987) - later Honored Doctor of the Republic, awarded the Order of Lenin, wrote about Rotov: “... the roots of his talent found clear water even in the poisonous soil of prison camp hopelessness, mixed with the blood of millions of people sacrificed in the name of the great Stalin.”

On January 4, 1948, Rotov was released without the right to reside in one hundred cities of the country. Lived in the city of Kimry, Tver region. But already in December 1948, without charges, he was sent to lifelong settlement in the village of Severo-Yeniseisky, Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he worked as an artist in a workers’ club.

In 1954, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR completely rehabilitated Rotov.

After his release, he returned to Moscow and worked in the Krokodil magazine and in the children's magazines Vesyolye Kartinki and Young Technician.
Konstantin Rotov died on January 16, 1959, and was buried in Moscow.