Anatoly Krisochenko
Biography
ANATOLY P. KRISOCHENKO was born in November, 1916, in Kiev, Ukraine, USSR. A graduate of the Academy of Arts in Kiev, Krisochenko received his secondary education in professor Svetlitski's studio, who was a student of Repin and Kuindgi.
His parents were gifted in their own right: His father was an artist, his mother sang as well as painted. Both encouraged their son's ambition to become an artist. The young Krisochenko brought attention to himself early and various graphic works were published in numerous periodicals when he was stil a youth. Like a great number of his country's talented masters of painting, he is graduate on one of the most prestigious and outstanding institutions, The Academy of art, where he studied principally under the painting master from Moscow, Pyotr Kotov. Utilizing this strong foundation, Krisochenko spent many years on the further development of his versatile talent, culminating in the creation of brilliant works in the area of illustration, easel-painting, and monumental decorative art suh as large-scale murals. Yet without question his main and most impressive achievements in the field of visual art are his easel-miniatures. This style of painting is a unique and personal art-form which is solely Krisochenko's and easily places him in the ranks of the Soviet Union's most gifted and original painters. Krisochenko has created not only a completely new style in easel-miniatures, but has given them all the compositional, coloristic, textural and emotional qualities of outstanding easel-painting, re-creating them in incredibly small formats in which the artist's technique becomes nothing short of a miracle.
At times it is hard to believe that the human eye and hard are capable of functioning in such a restricted space. These miniature paintings, with their magical visions of fairy tales, legendary folk heroes, like pieces of fine jewelry, express the artist's unusual gift or the lyrical and poetic. It is interesting to note that most of these tiny masterpieces when shown on the screen from slides or as large prints, give the impression that these are not miniatures, but strongly designed huge compositions, causing the viewer to doubt their true dimensions.
Like all genuine art, these works have consistently amazed artists and critics of divergent aesthetic beliefs. Through his creative career, he has been a constant participator in major exhibits in the Soviet Union and his works are found in many state museums and private collections in the USSR.