Piatkin, Dmitrii Ivanovich

Dmitrii Ivanovich Piatkin was a Soviet painter, graphic artist and an Illustrator. The majority of the artist's work included landscapes, portraits and graphic design. During the 1940s, Dmitrii Piatkin completed four courses at the Moscow State Technical School of Fine Arts in Memory of the 1905 Revolution. He continued with additional studies at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named for V.I. Surikov. During World War II, Piatkin served in the Red Army and participated in the liberation of China from Japanese occupation. Following the war, he worked in Port Arthur (Lüshun City), Harbin, and in other Chinese cities. From 1945 to 1951, Piatkin was the chief artist of Mitrofan Grekov’s art studio. Grekov was the founder of the Soviet “battle genre” and he ran a studio specifically for military artists. From the 1950s through the 1960s, Dmitrii Piatkin travelled to Armenia, Georgia, Khakassia, and Romania, and from those trips he based a thematic cycle of artwork about each city. The artist also developed cycles dedicated to “Moscow and Muscovites", "My Moscow Region", and the "Moscow Metro". Piatkin collaborated with the publishing houses Iskusstvo (Art), Plakat (Poster), Planeta (Planet), and Pravda (Truth). Piatkin worked at the poster production collective of Agitplakat, and he illustrated over 50 books for Fiction Publishing House. In addition to political content, the artist designed posters for aviation, sports, and feature films. Dmitrii Ivanovich Piatkin was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR and a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR. According to published sources, the year of his death is alternatively recorded as having occurred in 1990.