Valery Slauk

Valery Slauk is a contemporary Belarusian artist and an honored artist of the Republic of Belarus. He works in book art and easel graphics. He mainly works using the etching technique. Slavic mythology is one of the main themes of Valery Slauk's work. The amazing worlds that he creates exist at the boundary between his literary source material and his limitless imagination. The artist manages to maintain a balance between convincingly recreated reality and fiction. He creates unique compositions that are brimming with a variety of fantastic creatures from folklore that form a unified whole. Soft tonal transitions along with the artist's use of clear lines create volumetric shapes that are fully drawn down to the smallest details. They are interwoven to form intricate ornate letters, which combine to form the images of Ovinniks, Shatans, and Zhytsens. The artist's large format etchings, which are extremely complex in their compositional structure, form a kind of mythological treatise that is set down in visual language. Exact scaling of figures and complex gradations between the different areas in the drawing make it possible to juxtapose numerous figures of flying people, dinosaurs, giant caterpillars, and cats on a single sheet of...

1947 born in Kohanovo, Vitebsk Region

1971 – 1977 studied at Belarusian State Theatre and Art Institute under V. Sharangovich

1981 member of the Belarusian Union of Artists

2001 laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Belarus

2008 laureate of the “Best Illustrator of the Year” award

2008 laureate of the “Golden Folio” award for the “Best Master” nomination of the national “Book Art 2008” competition

2009 Diploma from the Republican “Artist and Book” competition for the “Best Artist” nomination

Since 2009 member of the Arts Council of the Ministry of Information

Since 2009 member of the jury for the Republican “Artist and Book” competition

2010 First Place Diploma from the international “Art of Book” competition

2010 Medal of Francysk Skaryna

2010 Medal for Merit in Fine Arts

Since 2015 Honored Worker of Arts of Belarus

2017 laureate of the "For Spiritual Revival" award