The article is devoted to the works that the Russian émigré artist Grigory Musatov produced during the 1920s. The text describes and analyses his specific artistic interpretation of the visual features of mass portrait photography. Grigory Musatov's paintings and drawings are examined in the context of the general trend towards a creative apprehension of the phenomenon of mass-produced, portrait photography in Russian and Western European art of the first third of the 20th century.