Notes

Yuri Vnodchenko was born on 8 October 1927 in Kasharka (Odessa region, Ukraine) and was active in Voronezh, where he died in February 2013. He was orphaned at the age of six, and went to an orphanage in a small village. When Germany invaded the Ukraine during World War II, the children were moved to Teraspol in Moldova. Life was hard and the children had to forage through bombed-out buildings in the city to survive. On one such expedition, Yuri found a set of oil paints. He began copying paintings he saw in books and museums and was able to sell some of these, providing a small income for himself. At the same time, an older artist who lived in the area allowed the boy to come to his home for art lessons.

When the war ended, Vnodchenko’s formal art studies began at the newly opened art college in Kishinev, the capital of Moldova, where he studied from 1944 to 1950. He continued his studies at the Kiev Art Institute, studying under the famous artist Tatyana Yablonskaya, whom he cites as the greatest influence on his development as an artist. He graduated in 1956 graduated with the painting Milkmaids and moved to Voronezh. He taught for many years at the Voronezh Art College and participated in all Voronezh regional art exhibitions since then.

Vnodchenko became a member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR in 1961 and was encouraged to travel and work at the academic dachas, where talented artists were invited to live and concentrate on their work.

In 1965 Vnodchenko started to exhibit and in 1976 he became an Honoured Artist of Russia. He participated in regional, republican and All-Union exhibitions, including several important Soviet Russia Exhibitions, and had personal exhibitions in Voronezh in 1977 and 1987.

His early works consisted mainly of still lifes, but he is now also well known for his landscapes, historical works, and paintings depicting the hard-working people of his homeland. He is an important regional painter, known for his poetic depiction of country life in Russia.

His works can be found in the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Artists’ Union of Russia, the Mordovian Republican Museum of Fine Arts, the Kramskoi Museum in Voronezh, the Orel Regional Picture Gallery, the Tambov Regional Picture Gallery and the Lipetsk Art Museum, as well as in private collections in Russia and abroad.