(b Novocherkassk, 19 May 1888; d Leningrad, 27 Feb 1963). Russian illustrator. He came from an engineer's family and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1908-13 under Konstantin Korovin, Sergey Malyutin and Leonid Pasternak. Between 1922 and 1924 he was a member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) Society, among which the work of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Dmitry Mitrokhin (1883-1973) came closest to his own. Gradually, Konashevich became one of the most distinctive representatives of the World of Art tradition in post-revolutionary Russian Art and an outstanding exponent of Russian book illustration. He used biomorphic rather than geometric designs and developed an unusually refined, ornamental style using mainly watercolour or lithography, with a light decorative wash. He illustrated both adult (e.g. Pr?vost's Manon Lescaut, lithographs, Leningrad and Moscow, 1932) and children's literature (e.g. works by Hans Christian Andersen, Samuil Marshak and others, often repr.). He also painted landscapes and still-lifes.
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