"My mother, Anna Konstantinovna, was a wonderful craftswoman. She spun and wove. She knew just the right number of turns to weave any pattern. She skillfully created patterns. We had a whole chest of her creations at home, spinning wheels, a loom—all the equipment. <…> I still wear the shirts she made for me after the war. <…> I remember my mother as very kind and cheerful. It seems nothing could bring her to despair. She had a light, gracious nature. She was also known as a healer. <…> She was appointed foreman on the collective farm, and then the collective farm beekeeper."

M.A. Savitsky

E. Pugacheva “Mikhail Savitsky”, Minsk: “Belarus”, 1982, pp. 7–8.

M.A. Savitsky's parents enrolled him in the Zvenyachskaya seven-year school, located four kilometers from Kokhanovo, in the fall of 1929. He attended Kokhanovo Secondary School from grades five through ten.

Kokhanovo Secondary School is one of the oldest schools in Belarus. It opened in 1868 as the Kokhanovo School in the village of Kokhanovo, housed in the volost government building. After the Great October Revolution, the school was designated as a first and second level school, then a seven-year school in 1928, and a secondary school in 1932. It was the first secondary school in the Tolochin District.

Between 1925 and 1927, a new two-story school building was constructed, and the old one housed a vocational school with two departments: metalworking and carpentry. During the war, the two-story building was burned down, and all school property was destroyed. Many teachers and students, as well as the school's principal, Solomon Moiseevich Kazhdan, perished in the fight against the Nazis.

"My biography is sordid. To be captured means to be a traitor to the Motherland, a traitor, as was considered in the Soviet years. Even at art school, three or four years after the Victory, many of my fellow students looked at me askance, suspiciously, and even with hostility”.

M.A. Savitsky

B. Krepak, "Mikhail Savitsky. Red and Black," Minsk: "Mastatskaya Litaratura," 2014, p. 44.

M.A. Savitsky spent three days in the Bakhchisaray transit camp, from where he was transferred to the Simferopol transit camp ("Potato Town"), and from there to Simferopol prison. In 1990, a memorial sign was erected at the site of the camp in Simferopol with the following text: "A fascist transit camp for captured Soviet citizens (Potato Town) was located on this territory from 1941 to 1944. No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

One in three Soviet prisoners of war who arrived in the German Reich between 1941 and 1945 passed through Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne (Stukenbrock-Senne, Germany). It served as a recruiting and transit camp in District VI. The former District VI almost entirely corresponds to the current borders of North Rhine-Westphalia. The so-called "Russian camp" was primarily intended to provide labor. In September 1942, M.A. Savitsky was imprisoned there.

In early June 1945, M.A. Savitsky was declared fit for military service. He was assigned to the 288th Guards Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment of the 6th Guards Mechanized Division, commanded by Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General of Tank Troops Sergei Filippovich Pushkarev. By order of the division's chief of staff, Private M.A. Savitsky was appointed military artist, designing the interiors of officers' houses and soldiers' clubs.

In November 1945, the division was redeployed from the Wiener Neustadt area in Austria to the city of Veszprém in Hungary. In late May and early June 1946, the division was transferred from Hungary to the area of the German city of Bad Freienwalde, northeast of Berlin. In early December 1946, the time came for demobilization.

After graduating from the Moscow Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov, M.A. Savitsky returned to his homeland in Belarus and began to live in Minsk with his wife M.Z. Savitskaya (Dzyanisova). At the beginning of his creative path, in parallel with working on paintings, he was engaged in book graphics. He designed children's books by M.A. Mashary, G.M. Kunovsky, made drawings for the magazine "Youth" - illustrations for the stories of V.U. Bykov "The Third Rocket", I.R. Novikov "The Heart Can Do No Other Way", and the novel by I.M. Ptashnikov "Wait in the Distant Gryns".

However, the apotheosis of this theme was the image of the republic-partisan in the paintings "Partisan Madonna" (1967) and "Partisan Madonna of Minsk" (1978).

"The two "Madonnas" as it were closed the period of 1960 - 1970s. in Belarusian painting, when the figurative and stylistic features of the modern fine arts of the republic were most actively formed. <…> Thus was formed Mikhail Savitsky - an artist of a philosophical nature, whose purpose is to show in close-up the highest moral and spiritual laws that govern humanity."

E. Pugacheva "Mikhail Savitsky", Minsk: "Belarus", 1982, pp. 27 - 28.

Alongside the military theme, M.A. Savitsky also developed a collection of works about the working man. The earth in his paintings is typically depicted in warm, golden colors. He also depicts his heroes in earthy tones—shades of gold. "Harvest" (1966), "Bread" (1968), "In the Field" (1972), "Grain" (1975), and "Bread of the New Harvest" (1979)—in these works, bread is not seen as a simple food product; it is a symbol of life. For M.A. Savitsky, bread embodies the labor of many generations, the honor and dignity of man.

M.A. Savitsky's deep emotional attachment to ordinary people determined another direction of his creative exploration – the embodiment of the image of the worker. The artist addressed this theme in the paintings "Social Obligation" (1967) and "Workers" (1968).

M.A. Savitsky perceived the history and identity of Belarus through the poetry of Yanka Kupala. The image of Yanka Kupala first appeared in the artist's paintings in 1972. Then he painted "The Sowers," a portrait of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas. In 1976, he painted "Vilnius Meetings" for the Yanka Kupala State Literary Museum. By 1980, a series of eleven paintings based on Yanka Kupala's works had been created for the interior of the poet's museum in Minsk.

In 1981, on the initiative of M.A. Savitsky, the state cultural institution "Creative Academic Workshops of Painting, Graphics, and Sculpture" was established as painting workshops of the USSR Academy of Arts. They were subsequently expanded to include a sculpture workshop, headed by People's Artist of the USSR Z.I. Azgur (1981), and a graphics workshop, headed by People's Artist of Belarus G.G. Poplavsky (1987). From their founding until 2010, M.A. Savitsky served as the permanent director of the workshops.

The creative academic workshops provided postgraduate education for young artists—painters, graphic artists, and sculptors. During their existence, the workshops advanced their professional development, helping over one hundred Belarusian artists improve their skills. Promising young artists were admitted after graduating from a higher art institution, based on a decision by the Art Council and a competitive process. The three-year creative process was conducted under the supervision and constant consultation of workshop directors.

Artists who graduated from the Creative Academic Workshops have received wide recognition from the Belarusian public and abroad. They work as leading teachers at the Belarusian Academy of Arts and art schools across the country.