Dmitry Dmitriyevich Zhilinsky studied at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after Vasily Ivanovich Surikov from 1946 to 1951. He attended the workshops of the muralist Pavel Dmitriyevich Korin, restorer Vasily Nikolayevich Yakovlev, and painter Alexey Mikhailovich Gritsai. He also got some professional advice from the graphic artist and illustrator Vladimir Andreyevich Favorsky.

Dmitry Zhilinsky began his artistic career at the same time as the Sixtiers. Soon he would start searching for his own path and creating images of modernity in the styles of the Renaissance and Ancient Russia. He also made several study trips abroad.

He taught at the Moscow State Art Institute named after Vasily Surikov and other universities in Moscow.

Zhilinsky’s works are housed in such Russian museums as the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum.

The Pskov Museum has only one work by Dmitry Zhilinsky — the 1971 “Two Artists”. It was transferred from the art fund of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR in 1986.

This double portrait depicts real people — artists: on the left is the Russian and British graphic artist and painter Oleg Alexandrovich Kudryashov, and on the right is the painter, graphic artist, and book illustrator Boris Petrovich Sveshnikov.

Two men of different ages in casual clothes stand in a cramped room. Their figures, leaning symmetrically against the edges of an open door, form the center of the composition. The man on the left lowers his head and locks his hands. The artist on the right is staring ahead. Both figures are colored in brownish-ocher tones and almost do not stand out against the muted color of the walls and floor. The work was executed in tempera on wood.

Zhilinsky painted his two friends who were representatives of “unofficial art”. Oleg Kudryashov emigrated to London and returned to Russia only decades later. Boris Sveshnikov was repressed for anti-Soviet propaganda in 1946 and rehabilitated in 1956.