Mikhail
Mikhailovich Goptarev

Russia • Saint Petersburg • 1938−2015

Biography and information

Artist painter. Member of the Union of Artists of Russia.
He was born in 1938 in Voronezh Oblast, in the large farm Khreshchatom, surrounded by grain fields and forests. After graduating from the 7th grade, he entered the Taganrog Trade School. Goptarev discovered an inclination to drawing in his elementary school years. Then, before he was drafted into the army, he worked at a factory. His passion for painting during the service only grew stronger, and Mikhail Mikhailovich enrolled in the Krupskaya Moscow Correspondence People's University of the Arts in 1961. His idol was and still is Arkady Plastov, whose lush, joyful paintings were a hymn to Russian nature and the Russian village. He entered the People's University of Arts, worked at the school as a teacher of drawing and draftsmanship. In 1964 he entered the Saratov College of Arts. Received an assignment to Atomograd, worked at the Palace of Culture artist and taught drawing in the evening college and school. Here he had his first personal exhibition. And then - Leningrad, the workshop of Professor E.E. Moiseenko. At the Mukhinsky College, he met Academician A.K. Bystrov and Professor V.N. Tyulkin. In 1969, Mikhail Goptarev moved to the Morozov settlement in the Leningrad Region, where he lived until his death. Until 2003, he worked at the factory in the Bureau of Architects. All this time he painted pictures, glorifying the beauty of his native land, participated in city and regional exhibitions. Held 6 personal exhibitions in the village and in Vsevolozhsk. Member of the Regional Union of Artists. Headed the art studio in the Creative Center of the village, five graduates of the studio entered higher and secondary art schools. While working in the village, conducted a large design activity. He is the author of the coat of arms and flag of the Municipality of Morozovskoye Urban Settlement. He is an Honorary Citizen of the Morozov settlement. Mikhail Mikhailovich dreamed of opening an art gallery in his native Kantemirovka. on November 5, 2013 his dream came true. The art gallery is located in the district Court of Culture. The gallery has more than 66 canvases of the artist, all in all he created about 300 paintings. Among them are landscapes, portraits, still lifes. Many canvases reflect Goptarev's warm attitude to summer - they depict watermelons, melons, apples and grapes. In other paintings you can see the familiar Kantemirovsky landscape that inspired the artist and gave him ideas for creativity. Mikhail Mikhailovich passed away after a serious illness on November 14, 2015 at the age of 77.