Oleg Zinger
FranceBiography of Oleg Tsinger
Oleg Aleksandrovich Tsinger was a renowned artist and caricaturist, also known as the author of several memoirs about the lives of Russian emigrants. He was born in 1910 (according to other sources - in 1909) to parents A. V. Tsinger (1870-1934) and V. N. Pavlova (after 1934). Tsinger's mother was an actress at the Moscow Art Theater, while his father, Aleksandr Vasilievich, was a physics professor and author of numerous textbooks on physics. He was also a passionate botanist and wrote a book titled "Fascinating Botany," which went on to have multiple editions. Oleg's grandfather, Vasiliy Yakovlevich Tsinger (1836-1907), was also a scientist, a professor at Moscow University, and a mathematician and botanist. The dynasty of Moscow Tsingers was founded by Oleg's great-grandfather, Khristian Ivanovich Tsinger, a German who moved from Germany to Moscow in the 18th century and was granted hereditary nobility for his faithful service.
During the Russian Civil War, the Tsinger family found themselves in Kharkov, which was occupied by General Denikin's troops. From the summer of 1919 to the summer of 1921, the Tsingers lived in the Crimea, in the village of Temis-Su near Yalta, where Oleg's father taught at a school and served as its director. In the spring of 1922, the Tsingers returned to Moscow.
In the autumn of 1922, Oleg's father obtained permission to travel to Germany for medical treatment (Aleksandr Vasilievich suffered from spinal tuberculosis), and the Tsinger family moved to Berlin. One of their acquaintances from Moscow, physicist Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov (1889-1961), became their representative in publishing matters when Aleksandr Vasilievich left Russia. It is known that Oleg Tsinger corresponded with Dmitri Ivanovich's son, Andrei (1921-1989), who would later become an academician. In his memoirs, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov writes about Oleg: "I (a young boy at the time) somehow caught his attention, and he sent me his albums with drawings of animals several times; perhaps it was a way to express gratitude to my father. I really liked these albums, and some of them have survived to this day."
Since childhood, Oleg Tsinger had been acquainted with animal painter Vasiliy Alekseevich Vatagin (1883/1884-1969) and took lessons from him in Moscow and later in Berlin. In the 1920s, Oleg also studied under artist Alexander Arnstam (1880-1969). He later attended the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and, after graduating, worked in the advertising department of the "Central Dikhof" company. Oleg Aleksandrovich is the author of the memoirs "Kolyusha - Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky," in which he writes about his life in Berlin and his friendship with the famous geneticist Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky (1900-1981), which lasted from 1927 until Timofeev-Resovsky left Berlin in 1945.
After the war, Oleg Tsinger moved to France, where he lived in Paris and later spent his final years in Nîmes, where he had his own studio. From 1951, Oleg Tsinger held solo exhibitions in France, Germany, and the United States.
He was married to Nani Mueller-Bellinghausen. Oleg Tsinger passed away on January 9, 1997 (according to other, possibly erroneous, information - in 1998) in Nîmes.
