Valueva
was born in Moscow on the 24th of October 1966 and remembers drawing
and painting as a toddler. Dated by her mother: a painting of a bird,
a dog-like animal, and a queen confirms Valueva's age as 18 months.
Her father, an artist, recognizing her talent became her first and
most important teacher, encouraging her to paint alongside him in
his studio. At 5 Valueva began writing poems and stories expressing
the feelings of the characters she drew. This treasured childhood
art is part of her parents' "private collection".
Thirteen
years of state structured curriculum taught by both the academic school
and institute established Valueva's art and drawing skills in "social
realism". Accepted at art school at age 6, Valueva began formal training,
two years later taking part in local, countrywide and international
juried exhibitions. At 8 she entered a Cuban International exhibition,
receiving a gold medal and 10 lbs. of Cuban sugar. In 1975 at 9, she
received the Gran Prix at the annual International exhibition in Delhi,
India. This juried exhibition of children's paintings, established
in 1952, grew to 150,000 children from 35 countries exhibiting work
in 1975. In 1977 Valueva received 3rd place, and again in 1979 she
won the gold (Gran Prix) at this prestigious event.
1977
was a memorable year. A documentary about outstanding achievers in
art, featuring Valueva, was shown in movie theaters across Russia.
The same year she was highlighted on the front page of a popular monthly
magazine "Soviet Union". Few realize achieving this fame in their
lifetime, much less as a youngster.
In the Seventies, the only style permitted for Soviet artists remained
social realism. The first time Valueva opened art books (given to
her secretly by a friend) with images by Klimt, Alfons Mucha, Sargent,
and Alma-Tadema she was stunned. She realized that her passion lay
with those artists, and not with the "acceptable" realism. Valueva
immediately began painting a required set of art for school, and allowed
her true style to emerge in works painted at home. Her father had
given her his studio, and she lived and worked there. Soon a steady
stream of people interested in new emerging talent rather than "official"
art flocked to visit the studio. Before graduation she began to sell
her "hidden" work to dealers from Belgium, France and Poland. She
became so popular that the Academy faculty had no choice but to award
her a summer's trip to study in Europe.
Valueva
had her first solo show in a prestigious Moscow gallery in 1993. Influenced
by photographs left by her great grandmother, a ballerina at the Mariinsky
(Kirov) Ballet Theater, and by her great grandfather, an officer in
the czar's army, the twelve paintings generated immediate interest.
A Japanese publisher approached her concerning the production of the
collection, purchasing all the exhibited paintings and requesting
more.
1995
brought a commission by The Bolshoi Theater for a ballet collection.
Invited to rehearsals by the art director of the company, Valueva's
resultant fifteen-painting series is on permanent display in the Bolshoi
foyer, and was used for 2 years as the opening backdrop for a weekly
TV ballet program called "Entrance 15".
Nostalgia
for the elevated, magnificent "silver age" of Russia has drawn her
to the past, a period known in the West as Art Nouveau, Jugendstil,
or Liberty. This is where the characters of Valueva's paintings are
destined to dwell.
Artists'
Point of View - "It's hard today to trace back the
origins of my affinity for Art Nouveau, a style which emerged on the
brink of the 20th century. I feel I was destined to love this art
from birth. This elaborate, refined, truly aristocratic style, regardless
of subject matter, conversely captures the fragility of all earthbound
existence. Decadence became second nature to me, its' reflection in
my works, again being created at the crossroads of centuries".
In her paintings, women often live in a mystical world, surrounded
by bizarre forms, signs and objects: a world real to them, to be taken
seriously. "Mirror of Art Nouveau", her first collection, was twelve
works about love, life and beauty." "My female friends; an actress,
a fashion designer and a photographic artist, were the prototypes
for my characters", says Valueva. Designing costumes for these models,
she drew numerous preliminary sketches. After six months, her subjects
appeared unlike themselves, having lost the aura of earthly problems.
Valueva peers into an inner spiritual world and expresses that on
canvas.
"Why
are my subjects women? Because beauty excites me, I like to see transformations,
diversity, the layers covering the vulnerable paleness of a female
arm, or tender mat luster of flesh; the skin's translucence beneath
a film of gauze draping a naked body. It might as well be the ultramarine
of the night sky and the whiteness of the stars. It would be the emerald
of riverweeds in a Japanese garden on a foggy morning...Tiny drops
of dew on the sedge. My brush does not just move about the surface,
it carefully penetrates the space of another dimension, going beyond
the frontier - which is insurmountable to anyone else. There truly
is space and life behind that fragile margin, as in a mirror. Of these
space and life forms I express my daily chronicles, of their everyday
life and feasts. And - of women who belong there".
Exhibitions
|
1978 - 1985
Moscow Secondary Art School, belonging to Moscow State Art Institute
named after Surikov.
1987 - 1993
Moscow's Surikov State Art Institute
1991 Professional
Classes at the Stuttgart Art Academy, Studied with Professor
Shafrat
1993 Solo
Exhibition in the Central House of Artists, Moscow
1994 - 1995
Three (3) Solo Exhibitions in the Central House of Artists,
Moscow
|
1995 Exhibition
Japan, Germany
1996 Exhibition
Tokyo, Japan
1996 The Making
of the Special Collection by the Order of Bolshoi. Theater for
permanent Exhibition in the Theater.
1997 December
- Participated in Art Manege, Moscow
1998 Exhibition
in Kagoshima, Japan
1999 Exhibition
Albtros Gallery, Moscow.
|
Introducing Artist &
Painter Valueva at Pierside Gallery, Huntington Beach
