Valery Bogolyubov, an Honored Artist of the Mari El Republic and member of the Artists’ Union of Russia, began his career as a realist artist. Since the 1990s, the artist was actively developing his own philosophical and artistic concept, striving to express his emotions, feelings and thoughts through symbols. Bogolyubov’s symbolism includes Finno-Ugric folklore, the fusion of graphic arts and painting, and his personal spiritual experience. The artist turns not only to national, but also to Christian and universal symbols. The search for pictorial forms led him to the simplest geometric shapes and color symbolism. Bogolyubov used the energy of color and its effect on the human psyche. It explains the “strangeness” of not only his symbolic works, but also his quite realistic still lifes and landscapes: the artist conceptualizes each painting.

The main aspect in Valery Bogolyubov’s work is the search for the meaning of life. With his works, the painter speaks about the senselessness of the pursuit of imposed material goods, which are vain and turn to dust. The artist reminds the viewer of eternal values: loving one’s neighbor, help and compassion, love for one’s native land, selflessness, integrity, and purity of conscience.

In the painting “Our Life”, the artist presents his own vision of the formula of being. The main message in his system is carried by the color symbolism of squares: four tones vertically and their three shades from light to dark horizontally. The world of ancestors, the past, and the roots is conveyed through the shades of red; the earthly world is represented by the shades of green; the aerial, spiritual world is symbolized by the blue shades; the world of the sun, the highest energy, and the divine principle is yellow. The horizontal division denotes morning, beginning, and youth, expressed in lighter tones; day, maturity, and strength are embodied in the most intense shades in the center; and, finally, evening and completion are conveyed through the darkest shades. The system of squares is crowned by a circle of four levels, the axis of which runs through the middle of the cross. The circle is a symbol of eternity and infinity.

The combination of the circle and the cross is a symbol of merging the spiritual and the material. The symbolism of the number 12 includes the idea of a cycle; and at the same time, it is a number that evokes many associations for every Christian (12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 gates of the Holy City, 12 stars in the crown of the Virgin Mary). The composition is based on associative perception.