Mikhail Savitsky was born on February 18, 1922, in the village Zvenyachi,
Orshansky Uyezd,
Vitebsk Governorate,
Russian SFSR. When Savitsky was nineteen years old, the
Great Patriotic War broke out in Belarus, which is also known to the rest of the world as World War II. The country was reunited and became a battlefield. Mikhail Savitsky joined the Anti-Aircraft Artillery and the 345th Infantry Division. At twenty years old, he fought in the battles of Sevastopol that lasted 250 days. Savitsky was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in 3 out of the 260 death camps. He was placed in the camps Düsseldorf, Buchenwald, and Dachau. Savitsky was liberated from the Dachau captivity on April 29, 1945, when American troops arrived. In the post-war era, Mikhail Savitsky received an education in arts. In 1951, he graduated from
Minsk Art College and went on to study at the Moscow Art Institute of Surikov, graduating in 1957. Savitsky became the head of the national program “Creative academic studios for painting, drawing, and sculpturing” in Minsk. He was USSR's People's Deputy from 1989 to 1991, became a member of the International Slavic Academy, and received the Order of Francis Skaryna in 1997. == Paintings ==