Valery Koshlyakov (born in 1962) is a painter, graphic artist, the author of installations, one of the most prominent representatives of the generation of artists who entered the art stage on the back of the Perestroika in the late 1980s.
The “ruined texture” of paintings is the most important plastic technique used by Koshlyakov, which contributes in a major way to the imagery and conceptual meaning of the works. The artist started to use it in the early 1990s. According to Koshlyakov, the viewer’s look is meat to interact with the “living” surface: “matted, frescoed, which is lost and then painted over again.”
The following works are on display: “The Venetian Lagoon” (1991), “Lions Fighting with a Leopard” (1991), “Rome. The Capitoline Hill” (1992), “The Night Fountain in Rome” (1992), “The Column Head” (1992), “A Horse Head” (1992), “The Colonnade” (1991–1993), “The Reichstag” (1994). They were created in the legendary art studios of the Trekhprudny Lane house; its attic was an important exhibition space for the artist. It was from the Trekhprudny Lane studio that the author handed the cardboard-based works over to Andrei Yerofeyev, the curator of the first state collection of modern art, which made part of the Tretyakov Gallery collection in the early 2000s. A second group of paintings was donated by the author to the museum in 2012.