Georgiy Mikhailovich Osokin was a graphic artist and a painter, Honored Art Worker of the Mari ASSR, member of the Union of Artists of Russia.

He was born on March 16, 1922 in a large peasant family in the village of Varaksino, which was a kilometer away from Krasnokokshaysk, modern Yoshkar-Ola. In 1920, the village became part of the Krasnokokshaisk district. Therefore, Georgiy Osokin is believed to have been born right in Krasnokokshaysk.

Georgiy Mikhailovich dreamed of becoming an artist since childhood. Before the war, in 1940, after graduating from a two-year art studio in Yoshkar-Ola, he embarked on his creative endeavors, painting the first pictures.

In 1942, Georgiy Osokin was drafted to the front, where in one of the battles he sustained severe wounds to both legs. While in hospital, he created a number of paintings and sketches. In 1943, he came to Kozmodemyansk, where the artist Ivan Mikhailovich Plandin, who was in charge of the museum at the time, took Osokin around its empty halls.

In 1945, Georgy Osokin entered the Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School named after Vera Mukhina, and after graduation he stayed there to teach.

Georgiy Osokin worked in the genre of easel graphics and painting.

From 1964, he was head of the laboratory of monumental painting techniques at the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, Georgiy Osokin did a great deal of collecting work among Leningrad artists. Thanks to his efforts, the Alexander Grigoriev Art and History Museum owns a large collection of art works by Leningrad artists, including Yury Neprintsev, Pyotr Belousov, Vladimir Gorb and others.

Georgiy Osokin painted to order for many museums of the Mari region. A number of historical genre paintings were painted for the Alexander Grigoriev Art and History Museum including “Mari people in Pugachev’s Group”, “Stepan Razin and Mari Insurgents”, “Akpars”, “Mari’s Messengers with V. I. Lenin”.

Georgiy Osokin, following the artist and public figure Alexander Grigoriev, made a significant contribution to the formation of the art collection of the Art and History Museum. Today the museum has 37 paintings and one graphic work by Georgiy Osokin, created in different periods of his life.