Valery Mishin
1939– · Soviet and Russian painter, printmaker and poet
Valery Andreevich Mishin (Simferopol, Crimea, 14 January 1939) is a Soviet and Russian painter, graphic artist, poet and writer based in Saint Petersburg. His work belongs to the nonconformist current of Soviet art, and his printmaking and verse place him among the distinctive figures of the city's art scene.
He graduated from the Sverdlovsk Art School in 1962 and then studied in the Department of Monumental Painting at the Leningrad Higher Art School named after Mukhina from 1963 to 1968. From the mid-1970s he was a member of the Lestnitsa Group, which he belonged to for decades, and in 1975 he exhibited at the Nevsky Palace of Culture alongside other nonconformist artists.
His practice covers lithography, etching and mezzotint, and he has illustrated more than fifty books. He is also recognised as a master of the bookplate. He has taken part in over three hundred exhibitions since 1966, in Russia and abroad, and has held twenty solo shows since 1969. His poems and prose circulated in samizdat from the 1960s.
His works are held by many Russian institutions, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the State Hermitage and the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, as well as collections in Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Bulgaria. He is a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists and holds the title Honored Artist of the Russian Federation.