Exhibition "Vertograd Liberated"

About exhibition

After the announcement of the partial mobilization many volunteers went to the military operation; among them was Simferopol resident Andrey Brailov. He went to the military enlistment office and signed up as a volunteer to prevent an attack on our Crimea, on the country — he considered it his duty as a man. The unit in which Andrey Brailov served, while stationed in the area of the military operation from September 2022 to April 2023, guarded the borders of the newly joined territories in Kherson Oblast at the mouth of the Dnipro. Military specialty — rifleman. While on duty he did not forget his passion for art; his diary contains sketches of the area where their military unit was located and beautiful landscapes. The exhibition displays include items of uniform issued to fighters in the special military operation, Andrey Brailov's diary, and letters from children at the Artek children's camp to participants of the special military operation, which supported him greatly in difficult times. Andrey Anatolyevich Brailov, born in 1969, is a woodcarver and artist. He was born in Simferopol and studied at School No. 20. He did not receive professional training in working with wood. His grandfather, Pantelay Erofeevich Brailov, introduced him to the basics of the craft. He was a jack-of-all-trades and masterfully handled carpentry and woodworking tools. Andrey loved to draw from childhood. His great-grandmother, Anna Ivanovna Leonova, was an artist who taught German and drawing. She went to St. Petersburg to study at the Academy of Arts, where she took lessons from Ilya Repin. The family had a fine library; the books it contained became Andrey's teachers. He trained as a food industry mechanic, served in the army with the Northern Fleet, and worked in a casino and on construction sites in Israel and Germany. In Jerusalem he experienced a deep insight that overturned his views and turned his attention inward. Andrey realized he would create pictures from wood. Upon returning to his beloved Crimea, he enrolled in psychology studies for self-discovery. Twenty years have passed since then. He has hardly worked as a psychologist, and as for working with wood and making panels, it has absorbed him so completely that he can no longer imagine doing anything else. A. Brailov makes true wood paintings — his panels depict landscapes inspired by the nature of Crimea and its notable places.