Alexander Alexandrovich Zibarovsky (1943–2019) was born in Kuybyshevka-Vostochnaya (now Belogorsk), the Amur region. From a young age, he liked to watch artists at work. In 1954, he enrolled at the newly opened art school in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and would become one of its first graduates; he later joined evening courses under Veniamin Lvovich Shkrab and then graduated from the Irkutsk Art College.

Alexander Zibarovsky worked in the Repin House of Art and artistic and industrial schools in Khabarovsk and participated in many contests and exhibitions. The artist made a great contribution to the design of Komsomolsk, its schools, community centers, and hospitals.

Zibarovsky painted landscapes and still lifes, he was also fond of genre painting. Being the son of the Second World War’s veteran, he paid special attention to the subjects of war and history:

Yet most of all, the artist liked to paint people. He created an impressive gallery of portraits, which depict famous Komsomolsk residents, veterans of war and labor, and numerous artists. However, the spots for his portraits were reserved not only for the famous.

The man, depicted in the painting “Gold of the Amur Region”, is a young Asian fisherman, who in all probability has just returned from fishing on a nice day. The man is holding the true gold of the Amur — a large chum salmon. The artist deliberately lowered the horizon line to draw the viewer’s attention to the fisherman. Behind him are some hills, a small stretch of the Amur River and trees that almost merge with the gray-blue sky.

At the exhibition dedicated to the artist’s 70th anniversary, the artist admitted that he painted every day, not letting his palette “go dry”, started to write short stories inspired by Anton Chekhov and was thinking of selling all of his paintings that he had accumulated over the years and starting anew in an independent studio.

Today, the works of Alexander Zibarovsky — the Honored Artist of the Khabarovsk Krai and the winner of two special prizes from the Ministry of Culture of Russia — can be found in the museums of Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur, as well as in private collections in Russia, Japan, China, Germany, and the United States.