Gerasimov was born on 12 August 1881 in Kozlov (now
Michurinsk) in
Tambov Governorate,
Russian Empire. He studied at the
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1903 to 1915. There he championed traditional realistic
representational art against the
avant-garde. He served in the army during
World War I and the
Russian Civil War. Subsequently, he returned to his hometown to become a stage designer, helping to present plays glorifying the Revolution and the Soviet government. In 1925, Gerasimov returned to Moscow and set up a studio, combining techniques of academic realism with an Impressionistic light touch. He favored a style known as heroic realism, which featured images of revolutionary leaders such as
Vladimir Lenin as larger-than-life heroes. As Stalin tightened his grip on the country, Gerasimov concentrated on official portraits, such as
Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, for which he won a
Stalin Prize in 1941. He produced a large number of heroic portraits of
Kliment Voroshilov, to the point that
Nikita Khrushchev would later accuse Voroshilov of having spent most of his time in Gerasimov's studio, to the detriment of his responsibilities as People's Commissar of Defense. Gerasimov's leadership of the
Union of Artists of the USSR (replacing his nemesis and ironic namesake
Sergey Vasilyevich Gerasimov) and the
Soviet Academy of Arts was criticized as heavy-handed. He was at the forefront of the attacks against
cosmopolitanism and
formalism during the
Zhdanovshchina. Gerasimov became the first President of the Academy of Arts of the USSR when it was created in 1947 and remained in his position for 10 years until 1957, when he was replaced by
Boris Ioganson Although his flattering portraits of Soviet leaders and his political activities against artists who would not toe his line have gained him a reputation as a
political hack, Gerasimov remained a genuine artist. Even at the end of his career, he continued to follow a moody, almost Impressionistic treatment of landscapes, at odds with the conventional nature of his official portraiture. ==Selected paintings==