"Human movements are fantastic. I'm just fixing it. Thousands of drawings per day - on the streets, in stores, in the subway. Another five hundred for the night. I do the same thing in music. And there, and here I lead the line. It's like a song: I want to sing - and I sing. If I were not an artist, I would not be a musician, "says Valery Kotov, composer and artist, about myself.
In the exposition of our museum, Valery Kotov's work - a portrait of Venedikt Erofeev (drawing - summer 2003, copy) takes a worthy place. Visitors to the museum are noted for the artist's refined style and the way the author sees and reveals the writer's inner world.
At the presentation of Natalia Shmelkova's book "The Last Days of Venedikt Erofeev" in the House of Journalists in November 2018, Valery Anatolyevich spoke about his friendship with Venedikt Erofeev and his musical works dedicated to the writer.
Valery Anatolyevich Kotov surprisingly combines two areas of art in his professional activity - painting and music, he is the author of several hundred paintings, periodically takes part in art exhibitions.
The composer's work of Valery Kotov today presents more than fifty compositions written in different genres: from piano miniatures to the opera "The Inhabitants of Stepanchikovo."
Since 1972, Valery Anatolyevich collaborates with various publishers as a designer and note calligrapher. At the exhibition of scores in Leipzig (1990), according to the testimony of E.V. Denisov, Kotov was talked about as the best note calligrapher in Europe. For all the time he designed about forty scores by various authors.
This is how Valery Kotov recalls the beginning of the journey in this new direction for himself:... "I fell in love with China. First to a Chinese circus, then to a small Chinese woman on the street - transparent, like a dragonfly... And, of course, in a Chinese drawing - mascara on silk, where nothing can be corrected, where the artist, like a sapper, cannot be mistaken. I went crazy: I read everything in a row about China, studied Chinese philosophy, took up hieroglyphs. Thanks to China, I became a notographer. "
