Usaitis Leonid

1924 — 1984

Leonid Aleksandrovich Usaitis was born in Lithuania, but was exiled to Kazakhstan as a member of the family of the enemy of the people (his father Alexander Vyacheslav Usaitis was shot in 1938 on the Butovskaya test range of the NKVD near Moscow). After Stalin's death in the beginning of 1950s, he was rehabilitated and with his wife came to Moscow. In 1955, Usaitis entered the Surikov Institute, where he studied at the Graphic Department in the classe of such famous masters of graphic art as M. M. Cheremnykh, Yu. P. Reiner, E. A. Kibrik.

His diploma work was illustrations for the the play by Arbuzov "Irkutsk story", his teacher on this project was Yu. P. Reiner. Working on this project in 1959 - 1960, he repeatedly went on creative trips to Lake Baikal area and Siberian big Soviet buiding sites of the time, where he created a series of graphic works on an industrial theme.

Returning to Moscow, Leonid Alexandrovich worked for many years as an artist at the "Diafilm" filmstrip studio, and later became an art editor there. With his participation, hundreds of filmstrips were created, in particular "Zayushkina izbushka", "Who are the boys", "The checkered goose", "Moydodyr", "Who comes first" and other famous works of the 1960s - 1970s.

The works by Leonid Aleksandrovich Usaitis are represented in private collections in Russia and abroad.