Boris Mikhailovich Lavrenko was born on May 6, 1920 in Rostov-on-Don. His education began at the age of 16, when he entered the Rostov Trade School of Arts (1936-1940). His education was interrupted, as it was for many of his generation by the Great Patriotic War. Lavrenko was drafted into the Red Army (1940) and served as an artillery man. He fought from Moscow to Berlin producing frontline sketches and portraits along the way. Lavrenko rose to the rank of Master Sergeant of the 199th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment before the war ended (1945). Lavrenko was highly decorated, receiving the Patriotic War Order and numerous citations including the Victory over Germany medal. About Americans he said: “I met Americans in 1945 in occupied Berlin. The Americans and we, the Russians, are very similar in nature and in our attitude toward life and people. I feel a great affection for them.” After demobilization (1946), Boris Lavrenko entered the first course of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin. There he studied under Mikhail Avilov, Ivan Stepashkin, Genrikh Pavlovsky, and Joseph Serebriany. Lavrenko graduated (1952) from Rudolf Frentz’s workshop after successfully completing his diploma work, a genre painting titled "At the Collective Farm Stadium”. Throughout his career, Lavrenko combined his creative activities with pedagogical work. He spent his teaching career at the Repin Institute (1952-). There he became a professor of painting (1972), head of his own personal workshop and chair of the graphics department. He earned a doctorate of art-criticism (1983) and published his thesis “The contributions of B.V. Ioganson and his school to the formation and development of Soviet Thematic Painting”. Lavrenko became a member of Leningrad Union of Artists (1953). He joined the Communist Party (1972) and in that same year held personal exhibitions in Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. He was named Honorable Artist of Russia (1976), received the M.B. Grekov Silver Medal for his paintings of the Great Patriotic War (1980) and was awarded the honorary title of People's Artist of the Russian Federation (1994). Boris Mikhailovich Lavrenko died on June 7, 2001 in Saint Petersburg at 81 years of age. His paintings reside in State Russian Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, in art museums and private collections in Russia, England, Germany, France, Italy, the US, and others. Lavrenko shared a philosophy with English poet John Keats. “My credo is the unity of truth and beauty, the truth of beauty and the beauty of truth”, the artist was quoted in a 1989 monograph by scholar A I. Roshchin.