FABRIKANT, MIKHAIL

In 1907, he entered the Law Faculty of the Moscow University, but he also attended art history lectures in the Faculty of History and Philology. After graduating from the university in 1912, he worked for three years in the Town Council. Being interested in art history, he travelled to Europe but was stopped by the World War I. In 1916–1918, he served in the Army. In 1919, he returned to Moscow and became an associate curator in the Department of Fine Arts of the Rumyantsev Museum. In 1924, he defended his doctoral thesis and started to teach. In 1926–1929, he worked in the Historical Museum; in 1929–1936, he directed the library, the archive and the photograph collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1936, he became the head of the Print Cabinet of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and in 193–1940 he served as the Deputy Chairman of the Research Department of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

"Of small stature, fit, always neatly dressed, he seemed a dry, pedantic person. He was modest and bashful, but very exacting and strong-willed when the work had to be done. He often stayed in the reading room, observed the attendants and was very severe if anyone forgot about the rules of handling prints and drawings. He demanded that the readers treat every sheet carefully and attentively. He knew the museum work very well, appreciated and loved it; and was an ideal curator" (Maria Kholodovskaya).

In 1940, he became a professor in the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. In 1943, he returned to the Museum of Fine Arts and, when its collections returned from the evacuation, he was busy putting them in order. Since 1948, he dedicated himself fully to research and teaching, he taught in Vkhutemas and in the Institute of Printing. He published more than thirty books and a multitude of articles. Many of them are still interesting nowadays, for example: Гравер Фаворский // Печать и революция, 1923, № 3 (Favorsky the Engraver); Экспрессионизм и его теоретики. Москва, 1923 (The Expressionism and its Theoreticians); Старые мастера немецкого реализма. Ленинград, 1936 (Old Masters of German Realism), and many others.