Valeriy Grachov's landscapes and abstract work

Artist’s Biography:

Valeriy Grachov was born in Archangelsk, Russia in 1949. He went to school in Leningrad in 1956 and later moved to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine with his family. He left high school in Kiev and entered Kiev’s Institute of Design and Architecture in 1966 with following graduation in 1972. Grachov traveled, resided and worked in many places over mountains in Central Asia, Baikal, Far East, on the islands in Japanese Sea. He lived and worked in Jyvaskyla (Finland) in 1988, Trenton (USA) in 1989-90, Prague (Czech Rep.) in 1974-75. Presently lives in Kiev, Ukraine.

Year of Birth: 1949

Gallery Representation: www.artevo.com, www.eefineart.com, www.raritet-art.com

Artist’s Statement:

My comprehension of absolute unity of the being had formed in my youth. Later I found acknowledgement of this understanding in the philosophy of Spinoza, Dekart, Chinese Daoism, Indian Shunyata and Advaita.

At the moment I position myself as an artist working in the direction of romantic realism based on mountain landscapes. However, it has not always been like that. My youth passed in stifling time of Breznev’s government and of course everything was prohibited except of socialistic realism. Therefore I kept away from officious art although I had never regarded myself as a dissident. I simply tried to live and work freely and independently, what was duly paid by society with non-admission to market and falling into full oblivion. I managed to get means of subsistence by performing small architectural and designing orders. The following 5 years I painted sky, ‘airplane landscapes’, when the point of view is so high and there is no Earth in the field of vision and there are only sky and play of clouds on the canvas. Later I began painting mountain landscapes. When you look at the mountain range of Karakorum from a great height, the landscape falls to applicative colored pieces that look delicately like medieval gobelin during the day and stun with all colors of rainbow in the sunset light.