Russian sculptor, People's Artist of Russia (1988), winner of the Lenin (1984) and the State Prize of the USSR (1982), member of the Russian Academy of Arts (1995), honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in the city Carrara (Italy, 1989). The family roots go back centuries. Grandfather, great-grandfathers and great-grandfathers were blacksmiths. The mother had two sisters and a brother Sergei - a member of the government. In 1937 he was declared an "enemy of the people" and was shot. Orekhovs fully experienced the fate of family members of "enemy of the people": his father was expelled from the party, and re-join its ranks, he was able only at the front. Interest in creativity manifested itself in the Jura Smith's early childhood - thanks to the education of the mother, who graduated from teachers' seminars and loved to draw. A first professional art teacher was his school teacher -Konstantin Skorohodov - a graduate of the pre-revolutionary Stroganov School. At his invitation, Jura Smith entered the drawing circle, where he worked until the Great Patriotic War. When the war began, the family went to her ​​sister and cousins ​​were sent to evacuate in Orenburg. Jury returned a year later and immediately went to a military factory "Electricity" in Mytishchi, where he worked on in 1945 in the tool shop, making mine fuses, communication devices for tank crews and pilots phones. He was a fitter-lekalschikom while a student at night school. In August 1945 at the Yaroslavl station in Moscow, Yuri saw a large poster of invitation to study at the Stroganov School. Having successfully passed the exams, he became a student of the Faculty of monumental and decorative sculpture. His first teachers were sculptors A. Malahin and C. Rabinowitz.