FEYTEL MULLYAR (1911–2011) Sketch for the portrait of Boris Pasternak

signed, titled, inscribed, dedicated in Cyrillic and dated (on the reverse) mixed media on cardboard 48.4 × 33.7 cm Executed in 1960 Feytel Lazarovich Mullyar (1911–2011) was a Russian-Jewish painter, illustrator and monumental artist, born in Odessa. A graduate of the Odessa Art Institute, he contributed to the decoration of the first stations of the Moscow Metro and created works during the Second World War devoted to the defence and reconstruction of Stalingrad. He illustrated literary works by major Russian writers, including Isaac Babel, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vasily Grossman. In his later years, he increasingly explored biblical themes.