Dmitry Nicolajevich Kardovsky (Russian: Дмитрий Николаевич Кардовский; 5 September 1866 – 9 February 1943) was a Russian artist, illustrator and stage designer.
Kardovsky explored various styles, including Impressionism and Jugendstil, but was more concerned with faithful representation than formal experiment. From 1902, he was prolific as a book illustrator, and worked mainly on the Russian literary classics by Chekhov, Gogol, Lermontov and Tolstoy. He also dabbled with political caricature, providing illustrations for the radical journalsZhupel (Bugbear) and Adskaya Pochta from 1905 to 1906.
In 1934 Isaak Brodsky, a disciple of Ilya Repin was appointed director of the National Academy of Arts and the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Brodsky invited Kardovsky among the most distinguished painters and pedagogues to teach at the academy. The system of master's workshops was restored at the Department of Painting. Students were assigned to one of the workshops after they completed their second-year courses. Professor Kardovsky had their own workshops. He also taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where one of his students was Grigor Vahramian Gasparbeg.[1]
He was an admirer of Mikhail Vrubel, whose posthumous exhibition he organized in 1912. Kardovsky died in Pereslavl-Zalessky in 1943.