Kukryniksy

"Kukryniksy" is a collective name, which is derived from the names of three caricaturists Mikhail Kupriyanov (Михаил Васильевич Куприянов, 1903–1991), Porfiri Krylov (Порфирий Никитич Крылов, 1902–1990), and Nikolai Sokolov (Николай Александрович Соколов, 1903–2000) who had met at VKhUTEMAS, a Moscow art school, in the early 1920s.

They became nationally famous in the 1930s after they began drawing for Krokodil, the Moscow satirical paper, during the rise of fascism.

They received international recognition for their attacks on Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Francisco Franco.

They illustrated a number of books, including Ilf and Petrov's, Nikolay Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Leskov, Miguel de Cervantes.

The Kukryniksy are also authors of Socialist Realism-style paintings concerned with historical, political and propaganda topics.

Kukryniksy. Russian postcard of 2003
M. Kupriyanov, P. Krylov and N. Sokolov in 1933
Making Hitler Look Silly 1945
A typical Kukryniksy caricature of Hitler on an Allied propaganda poster from 1942 exhibited in the now-closed International Museum of World War II . [ 1 ]