Victor Aleksandrovich Chizhikov was born on September, 26th, 1935 into a family of office workers in Moscow.

He started to get his drawings published when a schoolboy yet, in the newspaper Housing worker in 1952. After finishing school he entered the Art and Design Branch of the Publishing Faculty of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute (nowadays - the Moscow State University of Press), which he graduated in 1958.

From 1955 Victor Chizhikov worked as an illustrator in the comic journal Crocodile, from 1956 - in children’s magazine Vesyolie Kartinki, from 1958 - in Murzilka (from 1965 - the associate editor), and from 1959 - in the travel magazine Vokrug Sveta (Around the World).

In 1960 the young artist who was actively published in the periodical press was admitted to the Union of Journalists. He also worked in other popular periodicals, in particular those for children and youth.

Though Victor Chizhikov started his career as a caricaturist, from the early 1960s he was mainly engaged in illustrating children's books, and co-operated with major Russian publishing houses for children.

In 1968 Victor Chizhikov became a member of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation. His illustrations embellished books by almost all classics of the Soviet children's literature – Agnia Barto, Sergey Mikhalkov, Boris Zakhoder, Samuil Marshak, Nikolay Nosov, Edward Uspensky and many other domestic and foreign authors.

Easily recognizable, full of kind humour and warm-heartedness, Chizhikov’s drawings became known to millions of readers of all ages. In 1980 he created the famous bear cub Misha – the talisman of the Moscow Olympic Games 1980 - which at once became one of the most popular Russian cartoon characters. In 1980 he was awarded the order Sign of Honour, and a year later conferred the title of the Deserved Artist of the Russian Federation.

Starting from 1966, for over more than thirty years, Chizhikov repeatedly became the winner of the "Art of Book" competition, participated in exhibitions both in Russia and abroad, and got numerous professional awards, including the Diploma of Academy of Arts of the USSR (1980), Andersen Honourable Diploma (1980), and Diploma of Council on Children's Books of Russia (1997). He was also marked out with the award for the highest achievements in the genre of satire and humour - "Gold Ostap" (1997).

Since 1994 the artist has been the jury head of children's drawing competition "Tic-tac" of the TV company Mir.

Victor Chizhikov also showed himself as the author of children's fairy tales, such as “Petja and Potap”, “Petja Rescues Potap”, “Sharik and Vaska are Against”.

In the mid-1990s the publishing house Samovar started to issue the series “At Victor Chizhikov’s”, which included twenty books by different children's writers, and two books written by the artist himself. Each of the books in this series was accompanied with Chizhikov’s illustrations and a preface.

Among his most significant works of recent years is the book 333 cats (2005), which was created jointly with the poet and writer Andrey Usachyov.

V.Ivanova