Valery Valran

Valery Koziyev, known in the art community as Valery Valran, is one of the most prominent figures in Leningrad nonconformism. His creative work is remarkably multifaceted. In addition to his work as a painter and graphic artist, Valran is a researcher of underground Leningrad photography, a culturologist and art critic, and an exhibition organizer and catalogue publisher.

Valran was born in 1949 at Izhma Station in the Komi Republic, where his parents had been exiled as political prisoners. After their release, the family moved to the town of Pechora, where Valran spent his childhood. The artist recalls having no interest in art until the age of sixteen, living the ordinary life of a provincial teenager: “I hunted, fished, got into fights, and fell in love.” Valran says that his cultural awakening came thanks to his literature teacher and her home library, where he discovered a completely new world.

In 1966, Valran moved to Leningrad and enrolled in the mathematics department of the Pedagogical Institute (now Herzen State Pedagogical University). However, after the first semester, he transferred to study psychology at Leningrad State University. He was more interested in the mechanism of human consciousness than in abstract numbers, although both fields would later influence his artistic practice. During this time, Valran began making his first acquaintances within the unofficial cultural scene.

In 1970, a turning point occurred in the artist’s life. For the first time, Valran encountered the works of Jackson Pollock and Leningrad abstractionist Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, whose style resembled Pollock’s. This moment marked the beginning of Valran’s fascination with abstract expressionism. He began creating graphic compositions on paper using colored pencils, ink, and pen. He also experimented with monotype and invented various methods for generating abstract images on paper, often incorporating elements of chance. What attracted him to abstract expressionism was its spontaneous method, its focus on surface, and its texture and material properties. For Valran, this form of self-expression “proclaimed the reign of primal nature within the human being, revealed through the spontaneous gesture.”

Gradually, Valran moved toward figurative painting. Beginning in 1975, he worked extensively in the still-life genre. His works featuring bottles are particularly well-known. “In our youth, we drank a lot, so there were plenty of models in the room,” the artist recalls. In 1976, Valran began exhibiting his works at apartment exhibitions organized by unofficial artists.

Three main themes took shape in Valran’s work: still life, cityscape, and magical abstraction. Among these, his still lifes have gotten the greatest recognition. They are characterized by photorealistic depictions of objects that seem to levitate in space. The artist aims to “free his works from any kind of excess.” Interestingly, a similar approach appears in his cityscapes. They capture postcard-like views of a mystically deserted Saint Petersburg, devoid of cars, people, or even shadows from trees.

Valran’s choice of objects for his still lifes always stay within the same iconographic set: fish, vessel, skull, bread, glass, egg, seashell, and apple. They can be depicted from multiple angles and in various forms: for example, a piece of bread or a whole loaf, a glass bottle or a ceramic one, a faceted or round glass, a green apple or a yellow one. Some objects remain unchanged: white egg and human skull. At first glance, their arrangement on the canvas may seem random, but it follows a specific system. The artist roughly divides the canvas surface into eight sections, and numbers each object accordingly. Next, he uses a handmade lottery drum filled with numbered tennis balls. He draws them in sequence, thereby determining placement of the objects in the final composition. Absolute randomness or belief in predestination? This is a philosophical question the artist asks himself and the viewers. Valran’s series of still lifes becomes a metaphysical experiment.

The objects in Valran’s paintings seem quite typical. They can be found in both everyday life and traditional academic still-life arrangements in art classrooms. In the artist’s still lifes, however, they acquire a sacred, mystical character. Different combinations tell a new story each time and invite the viewer to decipher a hidden code. Some viewers may perceive religious or mythological symbolism in them, since objects like fish, eggs, water, vessels, and bread hold sacred meanings in various cultures. The number of objects in the compositions also varies. Sometimes the artist portrays the entire set, but more often he concentrates on just one or a few items. This is how Valran explains it: “My relationship with objects is unusual, almost like a romance. Each still life is, in a way, the story of that romance… They blend metaphysics, surrealism, primitivism, and minimalism.”

The background also plays a special role in these still lifes. Sometimes it is seamless, sometimes it is divided into sections, but it is always filled with a single color. In this context, it is important to revisit Valran’s background as an abstractionist. Among other things, he studied geometric abstraction and the classification of local colors in the works of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. The artist shows particular interest in the shade of green known as chromium oxide, believing that this color gives the space a mystical depth and openness. In some ways, still lifes with such backgrounds resemble card or billiard tables, where the arranged objects form an intriguing composition.

However, there are examples in the artist’s work where the background and the subject no longer oppose each other. Instead, they merge into a single dynamic whole. An example is Valran’s series Экспрессивная геометрия [Expressive Geometry], begun in 1989. In these works, the artist explored the relationship between abstract expressionism and geometric abstraction from a psychological perspective. Valran concluded that it is impossible to combine the rational and the impulsive and devised creative exercises to alternate between these modes. First, he created geometric constructions on the canvas, and in the next stage, he painted them expressively in the spirit of tachist techniques, using spontaneous painting methods.

Since the early 1980s, Valran has been working in textile collage, exploring the expressive qualities of various textures of fabrics and meshes. This work led to the creation of a new signature technique called мятый холст (crumpled canvas). The artist crumples a prepared canvas and drapes it in a certain way. Next, he glues it onto a rigid base. After that, he applies oil paint over this textured relief. Using this technique, he created the main body of paintings for the series Русская готика [Russian Gothic] (2008). Russian cultural historian Dmitry Likhachev coined this term in the context of his study of Russian icon painting from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. Valran then translated it into the language of contemporary painting, analyzing the stylistic uniqueness of each specific icon.

Alongside his intensive painting practice, Valran continued his education, successfully graduating from the department of psychology and joining the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. In 1980, the artist defended his PhD dissertation in psychology. He became part of the community of independent writers, publishing articles in the samizdat journal Часы [The clock]. Together with poet Arkady Dragomoshchenko (1946–2012) and literary critic Boris Ostanin (1946–2023), he organized creative workshops and conferences.

In the 1990s, at the invitation of an acquaintance, Valran joined the department of social and psychological research at the State Russian Museum and later became the department’s head. Between 1994 and 1997, he actively exhibited his works across Germany, including Bad Kreuznach, Wiesbaden, Memmingen, Munich, and Mainz.

Valran is known not only as an artist but also as a photography researcher and curator. In 1997, he became curator of the Saint Petersburg gallery Art-Collegia. There, he created and launched his first festival, Осенний фотомарафон [Autumn photo marathon], along with other photo exhibitions. He curated projects dedicated to Leningrad underground photography at the Anna Akhmatova Museum, the Russian Museum, the Museum of Urban Sculpture, and the Moscow House of Photography. Valran also published catalogues on the subject.

Valran has shown his work at over one hundred exhibitions across Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, the USA, England, and Japan. His works are included in private and institutional collections worldwide.

Anastasia Patsey

Translated from Russian by Anna Matveeva

Photo portrait: Valery Valran, 2010. Photo by Stanislav Chabutkin