Maya Kuzminichna Kopitseva was born on 18 May 1924 in Gagry, Abkhazia, USSR. In 1951 she graduated from the
Ilya Repin Institute in
Boris Ioganson's workshop and among her teachers were
Boris Fogel, Leonid Ovsiannikov and
Alexander Zaytsev. Since 1951 Maya Kopitseva has participated in several art exhibitions, displaying still lifes, portraits, genre scenes and sketches done from life. In 1951 Kopitseva became a member of the
Saint Petersburg Union of Artists and in 2001 was awarded the honorary title of
Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. She was a wife of well-known Russian painter and art educator Anatoli Levitin, a
People's Artist of the USSR. Kopitseva died of thyroid cancer in Saint Petersburg in 2005. Paintings by her reside in the
Russian Museum, in public art museums and private collections in Russia, Italy, the U.S.A, Japan, China, France and elsewhere. ==See also==