Easel and mural painter, graphic artist, portraitist, landscape, and genre painter. In 1944-1946 he attended the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art; in 1946-1951 studied at the Surikov State Institute of Fine Arts, Moscow, where he took classes under the tutorship of Pavel Korin.In 1952-1974 he taught at the Surikov State Institute of Fine Arts. In 1974-1982 he taught at the Moscow Institute of Polygraphy and held the chairmanship of the Institute’s Department of Drawing and Painting. Today he teaches at the Surikov State Institute of Fine Arts. Zhilinsky is Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, People’s Artist of Russia, full member of Russia’s Academy of Arts. In the early 1960s Zhilinsky studied the art of old Russian and West-European painters to learn their painting techniques and compositional principles. He sought to revive the traditions of Old European painting by thoroughly detailing the backgrounds as well as foregrounds. Zhilinsky’s aesthetic principles had a good deal of impact on those of a whole generation of Soviet masters in the late 1960s and early 1970s.