The People’s Artist of the USSR, the full member of the Russian Academy of Arts Gely Korzhev has died in Moscow, aged 87.

      The funeral will take place on Wednesday.

      One of the most powerful and vivid artists of the 20th century, Gely Korzhev was born on July 7, 1925 in Moscow. In 1950 he graduated from the Moscow Surikov Art Institute, where he studied under Sergey Gerasimov.

      The artist gained wide popularity in the 1950s-1960s, when his canvasses Raising the banner, Lovers and the well-known cycle of works

      Burned by the War were displayed. Korzhev said: “Life without art, without painting simply loses all sense to me. In creativity I value freedom more than anything. Freedom is to paint what I want and the way I feel and can”.