The Cup of Fate: Art Project of the People’s Artist of Russia Valery Maloletkov

January 20 – February 08, 2015
Exhibition halls of the Russian academy of Arts
21 Prechistenka street, Moscow

The Russian Academy of Arts presents the art project “The Cup of Fate” of the celebrated master of contemporary decorative art, People’s Artist of Russia, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, Professor Valery Maloletkov. The exhibition showcases over 200 works of decorative art including reliefs, sculptures,  faience, chinaware, ceramics, graphic sheets, photographs and monumental works created by the artist during the last years.

Valery Maloletkov is one of the most distinguished artists of today’s Russian decorative art working in various types of art and materials. His art shows a fusion of love for eternal values, deep knowledge of Russian and world culture, ardent aspirations and constant experiments with art form, color and space that resulted in the enrichment of his palette and deepening of the contents of his themes and images. His works are always full of reflections and philosophical view of the world.

Valery Maloletkov was born in Kiev in 1945. In 1969 he graduated fr om S. Stroganof Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry, he is a Doctor of Art History, Member of the Artists’ Union of Russia, Member of the International Academy of Architecture. The range of his topics also includes theater, literature, music, history. He has created a vast gallery of images of eminent figures of Russian and world culture, these are Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Alexander Pushkin, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Sergey Esenin, Isadora Duncan, John Lennon, Pyotr Bagration, Vladimir Tatlin sharing a complicated and sometimes tragic destiny. The artist applies the language of metaphors allowing him to contemplate a human fate within the lim its of a relative space sometimes resembling the form of a cup or a bowl.

He is a recognized master of ceramics - the oldest material on Earth. Various ceramic materials : china, biscuit, stone mass, terracotta, fire clay and faience serve   for the creation of splendid art objects, works of monumental and decorative art applied in architecture and landscape design. The reliefs for the Paleontologic Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow executed by Valery Maloletkov in partnership with a group of artists have entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest works of the 20th century architectural ceramics.

On display is a series of the artist’s faience works featuring fifty compositions revealing new plastic and color possibilities of the ceramics.  The viewers also have a rare opportunity to see his works produced in bronze, as well as photographs reflecting the artist’s traveling experiences in Greece, India, Germany, France and many other countries.    

Of special significance for Valery Maloletkov is graphics which at first was a kind of his creative laboratory and subsequently became an independent area of his creative work allowing the artist to realize his interest in portrait, landscape, still life and complicated multi-figure compositions.

Valery Maloletkov has been teaching in S. Stroganof Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry. The artist is a holder of many prestigious Russian and international awards. His works are in collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Russia), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), Museum of Ceramics in the Kuskovo Estate (Russia), A. Pushkin State Museum of Literature (Russia), as well as in private collections in the Czech Republic, Poland, Brazil, Italy, France, Greece, U.S.A., India, Germany, China, Japan, Cuba, etc.  

The art project also presents the artist’s monograph “The Cup of Fate” (Moscow, 2015) including 600 illustrations revealing the multi-sided talent of Valery Maloletkov.  





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