Mikhail Savitski is an outstanding painter, teacher and public figure, People’s Artist of the USSR and Belarus, and the first Belarusian artist honored with the title of the Hero of Belarus.

He was born on 18 February,1922 in the village of Zvenyachi, Tolochin District, Vitebsk Oblast of the BSSR.

His early years coincided with the years of the Great Patriotic War. At the age of twenty he took part in the battles for Sevastopol. Almost at the very beginning of the war he was taken captive and put in concentration camp in Düsseldorf, then in Buchenwald and Dachau. On April 29, 1945, he was released from the concentration camp Dachau by American troops.

He received his art education after demobilization from the army. In 1951, he graduated from Minsk Art College, then studied at the V. Surikov Moscow Art Institute (under D. Mochalsky) and graduated in 1957. The artist lived and worked in Minsk, where he headed the Creative Academic Studios of Painting, Graphics and Sculpture.

He died at the age of 89, on 8 November, 2010.

The artist was awarded the Order of Francysk Skaryna (1997) and was a member of the International Slavic Academy.