Azhigirov, Alexander Prokofievich

Alexander Prokofievich Azhigirov was a Soviet painter and graphic artist. Born into an ethnic Tangut family from eastern Siberia, Azhigirov attended the Moscow Institute of Art from 1933 to 1939 whereupon he graduated. At the close of the 1930s, Azhigirov worked in the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as a graphic artist and painter but his principal labor was designing posters. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1942. As a professional artist, Azhigirov began exhibiting his work in 1940.