Boris Vipper


Boris Vipper was Latvian art historian, Professor at the University of Latvia, Soviet art critic, member of the USSR Russian Academy of Arts.

Education

He studied at Moscow Imperial University and taught there, at the Latvian Academy of Arts and at the Latvian University.

Career

He taught history and art theory at the Latvian Academy of Arts, since 1932 at the University of Latvia and made a substantial contribution to the research on Latvian art. As an art critic, he specialised in European, particularly in Latvian, Italian, Dutch, Russian and German art.
Since 1944, he worked as a deputy director for research of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
His fundamental works are dedicated to the main problems in art history and include questions of realism, struggles between art schools and historical development of styles and genres.
His propaedeutic course for art historians, Introduction to the Historical Study of Arts, was unique for its deep and thorough analysis of technical problems and genres. He covered primitive to 20th-century art.