Ustyantsev Leonid Fedorovich (1930-2008) was born in the village of Bagaryak, Chelyabinsk Region. In 1951 he graduated from the Sverdlovsk School of Industrial Art No. 42.
He worked at the Sverdlovsk Jewelry Factory in 1951-1978 .
In 1979 he moved to the workshops of the USSR Art Fund.
Since 1961 he has been a participant of city, regional, zonal, republican, all-Union and international exhibitions.
Member of the Union of Artists of Russia since 1965. Honored Artist of Russia since 1991.
Works are available in the Diamond Fund and the Art Fund of Moscow, the Zagorsk State Historical and Art Museum Reserve, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, the Novosibirsk Regional Art Gallery, the Angarsk Art Gallery, as well as in private collections in Russia and abroad.
Ustyantsev’s products were often decorated with large grains, but smooth metal surfaces were also used.
The artist often turned to smoky quartz – a material whose ability to play with light and shade is mysterious and unpredictable, the play of stone is elusive and beautiful, like evening light refracted a thousand times in window glass, in asphalt and advertisements of a night city.
Leonid Ustyantsev – the first jeweler in the USSR, who received a high international award (Grand Prix at the Paris International Exhibition, 1962 for the Ural brooch), one of the founders of the Ural jewelry school; the only jeweler who received the title of People’s Artist of Russia (2004).
Participant of more than 200 exhibitions, founder of the Ustyantsev jewelry dynasty (the artist’s grandchildren, Alexander and Ivan, continued the work of the master in their own way).
Ustyantsev’s works are kept by the Diamond Fund, the Armory, the State Historical Museum, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the Russian Antiquity Museum in Smolensk, the Zagorsk State Historical and Art Museum-Reserve, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, the Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of the History of Stone-Cutting and Jewelry Art and others.
