Grigory was introduced to us by the Tkachev Brothers who were recently named to the top ten list of the most important Russian artists of the twentieth century.  Chainikov won a scholarship to the Academic Dacha, a small village and artist community half way between Moscow and St Petersburg where for the past 120 years the top artists from Russian and the Soviet Union would build dachas around pristine Lake Miso and paint. It was at the "Akademicheskaya Dacha" or Academic Dacha that Chainikov met the Tkachev Brothers who immediately saw his talent and his love for the Russian countryside.  Over many years the Tkachev Brothers tutored and nurtured Chainikov who eventually went on to not only graduate from the Surikov Institute Moscow, Moscow's most prestigious art academy, but also he became a professor at the Surikov.  The Tkachev's told us Chainakov was their best student, ever. And they had taught numerous students over many years. Chainikov was the heir to their legacy and one of the few artists the masters who carried on the Russian realist style.
Devastatingly, Gregory Leontievich Chainakov unexpectedly died in 2008 at a relatively young age. We still feel the loss, as does the entire nation of Russia. When he died, VRAMA, the Russian national TV news program (across 12 time zones) did a feature on his life and work.

Grigoriy Leontievich Chainikov is a vivid representative of the Russian realistic school of painting. Chainikov's paintings always attract the attention of the audience at exhibitions. Looking at them, one sinks into the world of beauty, which is expressed by the artist using traditional aesthetic conceptions of Russian people.

When contemplating the paintings created by Grigoriy Leontievich Chainikov, one is struck by the purity and simplicity of the artist's subject matter. Chainikov's work radiates kindness, sincerity and serenity. The art mirrors the painter's personality: engaging, humble and genuine. An artist's view of the world can dismiss abstract reasoning and meaningless rhetoric. Trained in the traditions of Russian Realism, Chainikov sees man and nature as the wellspring of his inspiration, as he uses intricate combinations of color and shade to frame a moment in time. For Chainikov, fantasy and abstract are tricks of the "evil one".

The historic Russian village plays an important part in his landscape motifs. He depicts village peasants' log huts, bath houses vividly placed on forest's background and a river running away. His landscapes are full of air, freshness and light. They are warmed up by the artist's live feelings. There is always some mood in them, calm joyful, lyric and epic, sometimes romantic, but one can never see in his pictures a nature of stormy and violent manifestations of feelings and struggle of passions. Chainikov included into his images of nature so much personal overtones that his landscapes are turned into lyrical pieces of poetry.

Detail from "Silent Evening", by Grigory Chainikov