Born in Moscow in 1952, Vasily Kafanov was the son of a poet father and journalist mother and was raised in a one-room, multi-generational household typical of conditions during the country's dire housing shortage. He first studied textile design at the Department of Applied Arts of the prestigious Moscow Technological Institute, receiving his degree in 1978. In 1984, he was awarded a second degree in animation from the Ministry of Film. Kafanov has had a distinguished career in Russia, becoming a member of the prestigious and world-renowned Artist Union. In spite of being a protégé of Marc Chagall, his work was largely unknown in the West until the late 1980s. Today he resides in New York where he keeps working on his paintings.
Kafanov's favorite occupation is illustrating children's books, an activity held in high esteem in a society that places much greater emphasis on literature than does ours. Since 1980, he has produced drawings for some 20 books (many, for some reason, Russian translations of works by Italian and Latin American authors}; since coming to the United States, Kafanov has contributed drawings to The New York Times and has illustrated a book for Simon & Schuster.
His love of illustration is always present in his works, which are often termed Chagallesque by more perceptive critics in the US and Europe on account of their fairytale nature, other-worldly moods, and obsession with the surreal, the mysterious, and the whimsical. Even now, although Vasily style has evolved to become highly original and distinct, there are echoes of Chagall's themes and styles.
Kafanov's scenes suggest faraway places and times: the barely defined landscapes and limitless skies recall the remote, shadowy realms of folk literature and fairy tales; his castles, thrones, churches, traveling minstrels, court jesters, kings and queens, and dancing harlequins recall the festivals and masquerades of medieval times. Or perhaps these places only exist in the imagination. The trademark of his artistic creation is the Fish Tower, an emblem best explained by the artist himself:
When I was born, the first thing I saw out the maternity ward window on the outskirts of Moscow was a bell tower. It was an old bell tower, used by the soldiers practicing parachute jumps. As a child I desperately wanted a fish bowl. For hours I could watch fish swimming in the water. Unfortunately, in our small room there was no space for a real fish bowl. My grandmother took pity on me and bought me a goldfish in a glass jar. For some reason, those goldfishes had a tendency to die one after another, and whenever I returned from daycare to find the jar empty, my grandmother would tell me that the fish had flown away. Many years later, when I saw the Manhattan island, which resembles the shape of a big fish with skyscrapers towering on its back, I once again found myself in the world of childhoods flying fish and towers.
After several successful exhibitions of Kafanov's oil paintings, the gallery proud to present his original works on paper, as another side of his artistic creativity Kafanov's distinctive meticulous style is still evident in this series. He combines architecture, still life, portraiture and figurative techniques, along with a delicate color palette (sepia, beige, brown and grays) to refer to actual European sites, as well as private moments and sentimental photographs. Each painting is rich in composition comprising of five or six different story lines.
His paintings hang in the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University and Beaulieu Museum in France as well as in numerous private collections. He has been commissioned to create murals to decorate a private residence in California and a public space in Amsterdam. Vasily generously gives his work to charity and participates in auctions benefiting several non -profit foundations. He has painted murals in the children's ward of the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and was part of the American Cancer Society exhibit and the Leukemia Foundation auction at the Lincoln Center.