The Russian sculptor and teacher Dmitry Nikitovich Tugarinov was born in 1955 in Moscow. In 1979, he graduated from the Surikov State Art Institute, the workshop of Mikhail Fyodorovich Baburin.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sculptor received the title of Honored Artist in 1996. In 2007, he was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, and in March 2018 Dmitry Tugarinov became a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation.

Dmitry Tugarinov is a professor at the Sculpture and Composition Department of the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute. In particular, he teaches Replication of Sculpture, Animalier Art, Fundamentals of Legislation in the Field of Fine Arts, Restoration and Museum Business.

In the fifth issue of the magazine “Young Artist” Dmitry Tugarinov wrote, “I am absolutely sure that everything I have in my life now, I received at the institute. Even my presence here today as a teacher — I believe in this way I am repaying the debt for what I received both at the institute and at the Moscow Secondary Art School.”

The artist found himself in free-standing and monumental sculpture. Dmitry Tugarinov is called “Gogol of sculpture.” Like the great writer, Tugarinov’s works are distinguished by an acutely modern range of images, although they also reveal traditional features familiar to everyone.

He began to create sculptural portraits and figurative compositions in the early 1980s. Almost every work has a subtext. Dmitry Tugarinov wrote, “The truth of life and the truth of art are two completely different things, and they should not be confused.”

Dmitry Nikitovich Tugarinov created the sculpture “White Nights” inspired by the novella of the same name by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. The artist’s composition clearly expresses the themes of love and loneliness. In this work, he depicted Nastenka with her lover and the Dreamer who despairingly leans on the embankment railing. Love and faith, deception and betrayal — the characters of Dostoevsky’s novella “White Nights” lived through all these experiences. The sculptor’s work is about a difficult choice for all participants of this triangle. This is his main idea.