FEYTEL MULLYAR (1911–2011) Portrait of Ilya Ilf

signed in Cyrillic and dated ‘F Mullyar 65’ (lower right); dedicated by the artist (on the reverse of the mount) mixed media on paper 27.5 × 27.5 cm 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 Dosto-evsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vasily Grossman. In his later years, he increasingly explored biblical themes.