Anatoly Shapovalov was born in 1949, in the Kirovohrad region, in Ukraine. In 1969 he graduated from the renowned Grekov Odessa Art School and in 1976 – from the Kyiv’s National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (studio of Puzyrkov and Plamenitsky). Shapovalov is an esteemed member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. His serene comforting artworks renew interest in mindful, contemplative and organic living, and are occasionally auctioned by Christie’s and Sotheby’s and held in private collections and galleries in Ukraine, Russia, USA, Great Britain and China.
Shapovalov’s contemporary Impressionism resists today’s age of information overload, of overwhelming technological progress, of speed and insatiability. His mellow and lyric paintings embrace the euphoria of slow living, of satisfying simplicity and of blissful life in romantic rural areas and in picturesque smaller towns.
Shapovalov’s conveyed stillness is telling, and, simultaneously, the work encompasses immediacy, motion and spontaneity. The dynamics, invigorating and undirected as a gentle warm breeze, is rendered with lush, generous and relaxed yet expressive brushwork and is transmitted with the help of impasto compositions and candid poses.