Aleksey Avdeyevich Anikeyenok was a painter and muralist who worked in the style of decorative expressionism. He was born in 1925 in Pushkin, which was then known as Detskoye Selo (Children’s Village). His father was a cabinetmaker.

In 1942, Aleksey Anikeyenok volunteered for the frontline. After he was wounded and suffered a concussion in 1944, he was registered as a disabled person. After returning home, he worked as a driver.

Between 1952 and 1957, Aleksey Anikeyenok studied at the Kazan Art School under the guidance of two mentors — Nikolay Mikhailovich Sokolsky and Viktor Stepanovich Podgursky. Sokolsky was a graphic artist, painter, and former member of the avant-garde group “Horseman”, while Podgursky was an artist who used to live in China.

While working on his graduation project in 1957, Aleksey Anikeyenok was expelled from art school for his commitment to avant-garde ideas and was recognized as “unsuitable for the profession”. At the same time, he started to participate in the exhibitions of the artists of the Volga region.

In 1964, Aleksey Anikeyenok met the physicist, engineer, and member of the Academy of Sciences, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa. The following year, the artist managed to organize a solo exhibition in Moscow with his help. His works were exhibited at the Institute for Physical Problems at the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Soon after, Aleksey Anikeyenok moved to Novgorod and, in the late 1960s, to Pskov. There, together with the artist Eleonora Moiseyevna Ginzburg, he designed stained glass windows for several public interiors between 1973 and 1981. These have not been preserved. In 1982, the painter was admitted to the monumental section of the Soviet Union of Artists.

Aleksey Anikeyenok lived in Pskov for more than ten years. He came to the city as a well-established painter. Due to his focus on creating custom stained-glass windows, he mostly demonstrated earlier paintings at Pskov exhibitions, in particular, from his most productive period when he lived in Kazan.

Aleksey Anikeyenok’s works were innovative and stood out from the art of other painters who followed the style of Socialist realism.

He often depicted ordinary people. In his works, the artist demonstrated the possibilities of color, texture, composition, coloristic and linear rhythm.