Winter in Crimea

Valerii Oleksandrovych Ostapenko was a Ukrainian artist, painter, and member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine from 1993. Born on January 16, 1943 in the city of Ussuriysk, Primorsky Krai (now Russia), he graduated from the Far Eastern Institute of Arts (Vladivostok) in 1972. His teachers in the specialty were V. Honcharenko and Yu. Sobchenko. From 1972 to 1993, he worked in Mariupol art workshops. Later, he engaged in creative work. Starting in 1966, he was a participant in regional and republic art exhibitions. He created landscapes and still lifes. Ostapenko's main works include "Native Land. 1941" (1975), "Rainy Evening" (1980), "Evening" (1988), "Christmas in the City" (1996), "Frosty Morning" (1996), "Snow Coral" (1998), "Nostalgia for Old Autumn" (2001), and others. Some of his works are kept in museums of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. He died on July 23, 2009 in Mariupol.