Valeriy Grachov

BIOGRAPHY

Valeriy Grachov was born in Archangelsk, Russia on January 12, 1949 in the family of serviceman. He graduated from Kiev's Institute of Engineering and Construction, the faculty of architecture in 1972.

He had fifteen personal exhibitions in Ukraine, two in Czech Republic (1994-1995) and also participated in 3 exhibitions together with other painters. The number of works belongs to some private collections in Ukraine and abroad, especially in Russia, USA, Germany, France, Finland, and Czech Republic.

The paintings render author's impressions collected from travels in Crimea, Caucasus, Pamirs, Tien Shan, Himalayas and also perennial experience of studying the cultures of India, China and Japan. As a painter and graphic artist he is involved in architecture and design of small forms. He has been also mastered computer graphics professionally for past few years.

Solo Exhibitions

	Place	Year
1.	The Institute of Experimental Designing, Kiev, Ukraine	1975
2.	The Union of Composers, Kiev, Ukraine	1982
3.	The Union of Composers, Kiev, Ukraine	1984
4.	The Union of Architects, Kiev, Ukraine	1984
5.	The Ministry of Geology, Kiev, Ukraine	1988
6.	The Club of Vasyutintsi Village, Cherkassy Reg. Ukraine	1989
7.	The Palace of Sport, Kiev, Ukraine	1993
8.	The Ukrainian Art House, Kiev, Ukraine	1993
9.	The Museum of Shevchenko, together with S. Naberezhnih, Kiev, Ukraine	1993
10.	Rifle Club, Prague, Czech Republic	1994
11.	International Trade Center, Central Office of AUDI, Prague, Czech Republic	1994
12.	The Gallery “Fatherland”, Kiev, Ukraine	1997
13.	The Hall of Archive of Literature and Art, Kiev, Ukraine	2003
14.	The House of Actor, Kiev, Ukraine	2003
15.	The Art Gallery of Kiev-Mogylyan Academy, Kiev, Ukraine	2004

Mixed Exhibitions

16.	State Planetarium, Kiev, Ukraine	1995
17.	The Ukrainian Art House, Kiev, Ukraine	1996
18.	China Jinshan (Shanghai) International Folk Painting Exhibition	2005
19.	Aesthetica Magazine Art Exhibition, York, UK	2006

Summary of the art career.

Valeriy Grachov was born in Archangels, Russia in a family of a military man. The childhood also passed there. The smell of a thawed snow became dominating accent of his emotional constitution, at that time he started to draw seriously a lot. His mum joked, that she had not mentioned what he started to do earlier - draw than speak or ski than walk. Often crossings with family accustomed him to a nomadic life.

He graduated from architectural faculty of Engineering and Construction Institute in Kiev. After postgraduate study, understood that painting and only painting was his calling. Before that he seriously dreamt of realizing in sculpture and music, in architecture and design. After first "walk" to Crimea the first mountain landscape came out. It was deeply imbued with energy of Tadjik Pamirs. That place later became his second native land. Everything that he came across and saw splashed out on canvases. That was an epopee of more than three decades.

Valeriy Grachov's art style can be expressed, as synthesis of Russian romantic realism (Polenov, Levitan) and Chinese medieval painting. In his youth the understanding of absolute unity of life had formed, and later it got conceptual acknowledgement in studying philosophy and different religions.

The person with uneasy destiny, who absorbed energy of mountains, truly and naturally presents so accessibly and clearly a miracle of the Earth - mountains. The miracle, which powerfully forms spirit and will of an individual.

These are pictures of a condition. A silent cool blows from "windows - pictures" where mountains seem such close and attracting, and still remain eternally cold and unapproachable...

Recently even the manner of the painting has became east, short, just a stroke, in a full concentration. Thus “variants on a theme” appear. Work is done once, forever and without repetitions. Touching watercolors with views of Truhanov Island and flowers, white clouds and a snow of Finland, and rigid unapproachable mountains are incredibly rendered in distemper and oil live in his workshop. As an individual, Grachov represents same "mix", the person with Slavic mentality and Eastern outlook. An incredible contrast in painting, outlook and a life.