Yushkevich Valentin S. was born in Belarus. In his childhood, during the war, along with his mother he was deported to Germany. In 1966, he graduated from the Theological Seminary. He became a priest, served in the “Joy of All the Afflicted” Church in Moscow. He started drawing in the 1980s. Basically, he worked with gouache on paper. The works of Yushkevich represent a magical and attractive world where images of the Christian religion and fantastic stories from the life of imaginary exotic countries coexist mainly with images of animals and landscapes (”The Country of Indonesia”).
His images of the saints – ”Alexius the Man of God”, ”Basil the Great” strike with their expression, reminding in the expressing power Byzantine and Old Russian icons, but without any attempt of copying them in terms of iconography. Yushkevich had an extraordinary colouristic vision. The paints in his works are dark and saturated, without any linear patterns. Forms and movements are transmitted exclusively by colour spots. This flow of formless colour matter seems to personify the magma of the inner world visions with melted sensations of spiritual experience and various impressions from the wealth of mass culture plots.
