Boris Grigoriev was a brilliant painter and a person of diverse talents with deep feelings and compassion. He is a prominent and paradoxical figure of the 20th century Russian art.

Boris Grigoriev studied at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts under Aleksandr Kiselyov and Dmitry Kardovsky.

Grigoriev was recognised and famous throughout his artistic life. He was the most popular portraitist in the 1910s Russia and created many portraits of distinguished people including Fyodor Chaliapin, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nicholas Roerich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and many other eminent figures of the Russian intelligentsia of the time.

In 1913 Grigoriev joined Mir Iskusstva, which exhibited many of his works, including the large series of Parisian drawings titled Intimacy, depicting non-parade Parisian characters. Intimacy made Grigoriev a well-known and recognised artist. Critics praised his mastery and wrote about the emergence of the new talent. Until 1918 Grigoriev continued to take part in the exhibitions of Mir Iskusstva in Petrograd and Moscow and in charitable expositions and auctions organised by miriskusniki in wartime.

Another his talent was literature. In a letter to Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russian writer, critic and publicist) Grigoriev wrote, “I was always inclined to theatre, but – just imagine! – not as an artist, but as a writer. I tried to write a play more than once… I am not afraid of writing to you, a renowned writer, because you can understand from my very first book, Young Rays, that I am doomed in this path too.”

Grigoriev continued to paint portraits of the Russian intelligentsia, whose fates in the emigration were very different, and not long before his death he finished his last self-portrait.

Grigoriev’s memorial exhibitions took place in the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art (1960), Cagnes-sur-Mer (1978), the Pskov State United Historical, Architectural and Fine Arts Museum-Reserve (1989) and the exhibition hall of the Soviet Cultural Fund in Moscow (1990). In 2008-2009 his works were shown at the American Artists from the Russian Empire exhibition in the Russian Museum and Tretyakov Gallery. In 2011 the Russian Museum and Tretyakov Gallery hosted large exhibitions of Grigoriev’s works.