Tkachenko Vyacheslav M. was born and lived all his life in Moscow. He got an unfinished secondary technical education, then worked in the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy as a commodity expert, a draftsman, and a foreman of a rotary printing shop. In 1937, he took up studying in a drawing circle. He was fascinated with Ukrainian decorative art and started collecting postcards. He studied Esperanto, communicated widely with different people. He began painting again in 1977. He studied at Extramural People’s University of Arts (ZNUI) with N.M. Rotanov.
The artist participated in all-Union, republican and urban exhibitions of amateur artists, about 130 exhibitions altogether. Tkachenko was remembered by those who knew him as an unbearable dry old man, an amateur gardener, a local historian, the author of many pictures of an equally small size copied from postcards depicting old Moscow, views from photos brought to him from travels, and still-lifes with vegetables grown in his own garden. He liked to depict snow-covered churches and buildings of old Moscow, as well as numerous architectural monuments, such as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior that were restored by his brush before they were actually restored. Tkachenko painted in oil, he did not notice the plastic fluidity of oil paints, but only used them to colour already painted patterns. Owing to that, his pictures are a bit dryish, they manifest the use of a ruler and a pencil, but a special charm of naive restraint can be seen in this stinginess and unpretentious expression of the applied means. Sometimes, especially in still-lifes and in architecture paintings, he managed to achieve decorativeness, partly reminiscent of the Ukrainian influences.
