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==Life==
Kyrill Dimitrievich Pyzhov (Кирилл Дмитриевич Пыжов) was born on [[January 20]], 1904 in St. Petersburg, Russia to Dimitri Mikhailovich Pyzhov and his wife Alexandra Konstantinovna, nee Strinskaya. His father was appointed the regional supervisor of the Bezhetsk district in the province of Tver soon after Kyrill Dimitrievich's birth. His mother, who died in 1912, was an artist. She had graduated from the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture and worked in the studios of Makovsky, Polenov, and Perov. She followed in the foot steps of her father, who had graduated from the Academy of Art in Florence.
After the February Revolution in 1917, Dimitri Mikhailovich and his three sons, Eugene, Kyrill, and George, moved to Petrograd, where they endured hunger and cold. Late in 1918, they moved to Shchigri in the Kursk province. Then, when the White Army arrived in Kursk, the Pyzhovs made their way to Simferopol in the Crimea. While in Simferopol, Kyrill, 15-years old volunteered as a soldier and was sent to the front and endured the tribulations of the Volunteer Army, including evacuation from the Crimea and service at Gallipoli. There, Kyrill joined the Alexandrov Military School at which he studied for three years until it was closed in 1923. Then traveling through Bulgaria, Kyrill moved to France where he joined his older brother, Eugene.
As the Soviet army began to approach Czechoslovakia in 1944, the monastery's brethren evacuated through Bratislava to Berlin, where they found shelter in a half-ruined house. Fr. Kyprian, suffering from pneumonia, was sent to a convent dormitory across from a [[church]], whose [[rector]] was Archimandrite [[John (Shahovskoy) of San Francisco|John (Shahovskoy)]]. While recuperating, Fr. Kyprian entered the church and noticed on the candle desk printed copies of [[icon]]s he painted for a Dresden commission. After his recovery, Fr. Kyprian and the monks continued their escape from Berlin, first to Geneva, then the United States, to a final destination after his wanderings, [[Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, New York)|Holy Trinity Monastery]] in Jordanville, New York.
"My very first days in Holy Trinity Monastery," remembered Fr. Kyprian, "reminded me of my first days at the Monastery at Ladomirovo in Carpathian Russia". This feeling did not last, as he soon had set up an icon-painting studio and was joined by the Novice [[Alypy (GramanovichGamanovich) of Chicago|Nikolai]] whom he had met in Germany before their escape. Nikolai, who had been tonsured with the name of Alypy in honor of the icon-painter of Pechersk, became an irreplaceable helper, both in the studio and in obedience, as an emulator of the ancient monk of Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Hieromonk Alypy.
In 1946, the monastery began building a brick church dedicated to the [[Holy Trinity]] of which Fr. Kyprian and Mk. Alypy painted the interior. In 1950, the church was completed, including the iconographic painting of the interior, and consecrated by Metr. Anastassy. Fr. Kyprian continued his painting of the newly built four-story monastic residence at the monastery, which also contained the monastery print shop, offices, and refectory. Then, Fr. Kyprian continued with the icon-painting of a small church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, designed by V. Glinin, and built in the monastic cemetery.
