Film director, screenwriter, People's Artist of the USSR (1948), six-time winner of the Stalin (State) Prize (1941, 1942, 1943, 1946, 1948, 1951).

Ivan Pyriev is one of the brightest and most significant figures in Russian cinema. It symbolizes a whole era in the history of Soviet cinema. A bright personality, a great artist, a real ascetic, selflessly in love with cinema, I.A. Pyryev was endowed with tremendous talent, he perfectly felt the nature of cinema, understood its essence and purpose.

Ivan Pyryev was born on November 17, 1901 in the Altai village of Kamen into a peasant family, studied at a parish school, and began working life at the age of 12.

In 1916 he volunteered for the German front, served in the 32nd and 9th Siberian rifle regiments. Decorated with two St. George crosses. He was a participant in the civil war, but after being treated in a hospital where he was wounded, I. Pyriev tried to return to Kamen, but due to illness and a difficult political situation he could only get to Yekaterinburg, where he lived and worked until 1921. Ivan Pyriev became one of the organizers of the Ural Proletkult. In Yekaterinburg, for three months under the name Altaysky, he played small roles in a professional drama troupe. At the end of the summer of 1921, the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater came to Yekaterinburg on tour, and, delighted with the theatrical art, Pyriev soon went to Moscow, where he graduated from the acting and directing departments.

I.A. Pyryev belongs to the "generation of revolution", which in the early 1920s. the social element brought to the forefront of life. These were active people, driven by a sense of social duty, capable of creating in the conditions of a new historical reality.

Pyryev began his independent directorial career in 1929, staging the satirical film "The Outside Woman" based on a script by N. Erdman and A. Mariengof. Next came the paintings "Government Official", "Conveyor Belt of Death", "Party Card".

Pyryev subtly felt his viewer, accurately understood the meaning of the historical moment experienced by the people. The director found his "own" genre in art, which became a folk musical comedy. The paintings of I. Pyryev "The Rich Bride", "Tractor Drivers", "The Pig and the Shepherd", "The Legend of the Siberian Land", "Kuban Cossacks", expressing the hopes and thoughts of the people, are now perceived as cinematographic documents of a bygone historical reality.

A lot of creative energy was given to Pyryev film adaptations of F.M. Dostoevsky. He created such awnings as "The Idiot". "White Nights", "The Brothers Karamazov", which now make up the golden fund of Russian film classics. Pyryev created these adaptations not for the elite, but for everyone, for the people. They also bear a pronounced imprint of the director's personal interpretation of classic images.

The powerful energy of a Siberian, a man from the earth, an intellectual in the first generation was enough for everything: for selfless social activity and indefatigable creative work.

In the history of Russian cinematography I.A. Pyryev appears as a monumental figure, thanks to which in the 1950s-1960s the cinema life in our country radically changed: the Mosfilm film studio was expanded and refurbished, the Higher Courses for Directors and Screenwriters were opened, the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR was established, the Bureau of Propaganda of Soviet Cinema was opened, and periodicals, national film festivals began to be held, the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR was organized.

Source and photo: State Museum of the History of Literature, Art and Culture of Altai.