Aleksei Ilyich Kravchenko

Aleksei Ilyich Kravchenko was born on 30 January 1889 under the Julian calendar in use in Russia at the time (11 February 1889, Gregorian), in Pokrovskaya Sloboda, Saratov region, a town now known as Engels. He began formal art training in 1903 at Simon Hollosy's art school in Munich, then entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, studying there in 1904 to 1905 and again in 1907 to 1910 under Sergey Ivanov, Abram Arkhipov, Konstantin Korovin, and Valentin Serov. He graduated with distinction in 1910.

Between 1918 and 1921 he worked in Saratov as a stage designer, poster artist, and designer of monumental revolutionary street pageants, before shifting his focus in Moscow to book illustration and printmaking, especially wood engraving. From 1925 he was a member of the Four Arts Society of Artists. His work was shown internationally during his lifetime, including a 1922 Berlin group exhibition alongside Archipenko, Chagall, Filonov, Gabo, Lissitzky, Malevich, Puni, Rozanova, and Tatlin; the Russia Pavilion at the 1924 Venice Biennale; a 1924 New York group show with Bakst, Dobuzhinsky, and Chekhonin; and the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. At least one source credits him with a Grand Prix at that exposition, though this could not be independently corroborated. He died on 31 May 1940 in Moscow and is buried, according to available biographical records, at Novodevichy Cemetery.

No verbatim, attributable critical assessment of Kravchenko from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is quoted here. What is well documented is his institutional standing: inclusion in major international showcases of Russian art in the 1920s, an award some sources describe as a Grand Prix at the 1925 Paris Exposition though this could not be independently corroborated, and repeated posthumous retrospectives at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (1974 and 2009) and at Pushkin House in London (2010), which point to a durable reputation as one of the leading Russian book illustrators and printmakers of his era.

Kravchenko's all-time auction record could not be independently confirmed. Auction aggregators indicate meaningful activity, Artprice cites 48 auction appearances and MutualArt lists more than 40, but none of the sources reviewed for this profile disclose a specific work, sale price, auction house, and date behind those totals. One aggregator, FindArtInfo, cites a highest recorded price of roughly USD 431,000 in its database, without naming the corresponding work, house, or sale date. Given this, his market should be read as historically active but too opaque at the level of individual transactions to support a confident headline price.

Kravchenko has no published catalogue raisonne, so provenance and auction-house expertise, rather than a unified reference, are the primary tools for verifying a given work. His auction history is thin, and no specific high-value transaction could be independently confirmed from the sources reviewed, so collectors should treat any quoted record price with caution until it can be traced to a primary auction house record. No current commercial gallery or estate representation could be confirmed, so the market is effectively an auction and private-dealer market rather than a primary one, and collectors should weight museum holdings and exhibition history over any single price point.