Svetlana Valueva

Svetlana Valueva

Svetlana Valueva was born in Moscow in 1966. She studied art at the Surikov Art School for seven years. After graduating from school, Svetlana studied art at the Surikov Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, and then spent a long internship at the Stuttgart Academy of Arts (Germany).

”I’ve always loved portraying women. Some images were born in my imagination. Each new face, so unique, appeared in the beginning in my imagination, and then I depicted it on canvas.” Svetlana Valueva had her first solo show in a Moscow gallery in 1993. Influenced by photographs left by her great grandmother, a ballerina at the Marinsky (Kirov) Ballet Theater, and by her great grandfather, an officer in the czar’s army, the twelve paintings she created for the exhibit generated immediate interest. A Japanese publisher purchased all of them, and requested more. In 1995 she was commissioned by The Bolshoi Theater for a ballet collection. Invited to rehearsals by the art director of the company, Valueva created 15 painting that are on permanent display in the Bolshoi foyer. 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.