Shalva Bedoyev

Shalva Yevgenyevich Bedoyev was a Soviet and Russian painter, teacher and academic whose canvases drew on Ossetian life, history and legend. Born on 15 October 1940 in the village of Monaster in what was then the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast of the Georgian SSR, he trained at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad and graduated with distinction in 1969 from the studio of Yevsey Moiseyenko. He became a member of the USSR Union of Artists in 1971 and spent decades living and working in Vladikavkaz while teaching at North Ossetian State University named after K. L. Khetagurov.

Bedoyev worked in narrative painting, landscape and portrait. From the early 1970s he showed work in all-Union, Russian and international exhibitions. He served on the board of the USSR Union of Artists, on the national painting commission, and later as a corresponding member and then a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts. Between 2000 and 2005 he chaired the Union of Artists of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. From 1981 he headed the fine arts department of the university's Faculty of Arts and held the rank of professor.

His paintings entered the State Russian Museum, the museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, regional collections and private holdings abroad. Notable works include The Grape Harvest (1972), Cherry Beauty of the Kuban (1974), Youth (1979), Banner of Freedom (1981), Amazon (1984 and later variants), Revolutionary Ossetia (1987), Ossetian Fairy Tale and Still Life with Corn (1988), Dzerassa with the Apple of the Narts (1989), Petroglyphs, Homer and Self-Portrait from Three Sides (1991), Flowers of the Mountains (1995), Saint George (1997), Melody of Antiquity (1998) and Still Life with Reflection (2000).

Russian honours marked that career. He was named People's Artist of the North Ossetian ASSR in 1984, Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1988 and People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 2019. He received the Medal of the Order For Merit to the Fatherland, second class, in 2006, and was a laureate of the K. L. Khetagurov State Prize of North Ossetia-Alania.

His body was found on 4 October 2026 in his studio on Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street in Moscow. Workers from the Union of Artists discovered him; Russian reports said he may have been in the studio for about a month and that the exact circumstances of death were not yet public. Russian biographical sources place the death in September 2026. He was 85. Museums, students and the Ossetian and Russian art communities remembered a painter who joined academic training to Caucasian subjects and who taught generations at Vladikavkaz.