Born Dankov, 1916; died Dankov, 1997

Andrei Ivanovich Plotnov moved to Moscow in 1933 to study at the Regional Art School of the Memory of 1905. Three years later, at the urging of art critic and future museum director Igor Grabar’, he joined the Department of Painting at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov. In 1942 he was evacuated to Samarkand, where he completed his course of study. He was drafted the following year and joined the Art Studio of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), where he worked under Pavel Sokolov-Skalia. Between December 1943 and December 1946, he designed approximately thirty posters for the TASS studio. Following the war, he returned to painting and participated in two noteworthy creative missions to Central Asia and Kazakhstan (1948–55, 1978–80). In 1970 he was awarded the title Honored Worker of Arts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

_{Andrei Ivanovich Plotnov. Gather the Entire Harvest on Schedule!, 1945. Ne boltai! Collection.}