Viacheslav Mikhailov, Mary and Helene

Vyacheslav Mikhailov was born in 1945 in the Stavropol Territory, in the village of Arzgir, remote from the railway. Three times Mikhailov failed to enter the art school of Rostov-on-Don. The written refusal of the school “to no longer worry about being completely mediocre”, of course, sounded insulting, which served as a kind of challenge to the young man. At the age of 26, having served in the army, Mikhailov dared to enter the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. I. E. Repina. He successfully ventured, graduating from the institute in the class of painting in the studio of Professor Yevsey Moiseenko. In 1979 Mikhailov completed his postgraduate studies, also in Moiseenko's workshop.

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Academy of Art in 1977 and becoming a member of Artists’ Union of Russia in 1979, Viacheslav Mikhailov began his career as an official artist, and achieved the highest honor by receiving Lenin’s Komsomol Prize. However, in his free time Mikhailov painted different types of pictures with associative and allegorical subjects, often in violent and bloody conflict, reminiscent of some of Francis Bacon’s works. Mikhailov’s style can be characterized by a highly expressive, almost sculptural surface, which is achieved by using gypsum padding and heavy impasto. Mikhailov has been an active participant in more than 200 solo and group exhibitions in Russia and abroad. In addition, his works occupy several major Russian and European museums and private collections.