Фота: фэйсбук Пятра Кузняцова
Businessman and co-owner of the Horvat Palace in Naroulia Piotr Kuzniatsou wrote on Facebook about purchasing a work by Valery Liashkevich, a Homiel artist who once became famous for selling his paintings on the city’s streets. Director Anastasiya Mirashnichenka made a documentary about him, “Crossroads”, released in 2014, and the National Art Museum held an exhibition of his work.
Piotr Kuzniatsou said that Liashkevich had suddenly returned to the streets. He was spotted yesterday near Kyiv Descent, selling his paintings. The artist had previously been homeless, but people who cared about his work helped him.
“The ‘Belarusian Picasso’, as Liashkevich is informally known, had indeed not been seen for a long time. As far as I know, volunteers have been helping him recently by selling his paintings online. The proceeds pay for his rented flat, and that is how he gets by,” Kuzniatsou said.
The artist went out to sell his work himself because his passport had expired and he had no money for food or medicine. “I read comments under the news saying that he was supposedly doing fine and was a pensioner anyway. I don’t know whether he is ‘doing fine’, but I do know that he is a Russian citizen. Given that he is unlikely to have any formal employment record in the conventional sense, I would assume that he receives no pension, apart from possibly the minimum social pension,” Piotr Kuzniatsou explained. “It is a familiar situation: accumulated household expenses force Belarusians to ‘sell their dollars’, while artists are forced to sell their work. According to him, he sometimes ‘lets them go for whatever people will pay’. He simply needs to survive.”
Piotr Kuzniatsou bought one of his works, and it was not one of those he was willing to “let go for whatever people will pay.”
“This is a painting that, according to him, has been exhibited and that galleries wanted to acquire. It has a reasonable price tag, which I will not disclose. As I understand it, all his problems have been resolved for the time being. The painting may eventually decorate the interior of the palace in Naroulia.
Liashkevich is a legendary figure, recognised during his lifetime, with his own story and artistic legacy. It was important to me to help him in a difficult situation.
It is also important to me that his paintings remain here,” the businessman concluded.