What happens when an artist trained in the classical Russian tradition falls in love with Venice? For Sergei Moskalev, the answer is a collection of 33 paintings that capture the city’s romance, mystery, and shimmering beauty like few others have managed.
The My Love Letter to Venice collection marks a significant chapter in Moskalev’s artistic journey. While his earlier Paris series explored the golden warmth of French boulevards, Venice demanded something different — a language of water, reflection, and movement that pushed his technique in new directions.
Why Venice Speaks to Sergei Moskalev
Venice is a city built on contradiction. It is solid stone rising from liquid water. It is ancient yet constantly shifting. For Moskalev, whose work has always been drawn to the emotional energy of cities, Venice offered an irresistible subject: a place where light never behaves the same way twice.
“Venice feels like a memory that never fully fades,” Moskalev explains. “In my paintings, I am drawn to the way light rests gently on the water, how reflections blur the boundary between what is real and what is imagined.”
This quality is immediately visible in works like My Love Letter to Venice 004, where warm golds dissolve into deep blues, and the architecture seems to float between two worlds — the physical and the remembered.
The Role of Gold Leaf in the Venice Series
One of the most distinctive elements of Moskalev’s Venice paintings is his use of gold leaf. Applied directly to the canvas alongside oil paint, the gold leaf catches real light in the room where the painting hangs, creating an effect that changes throughout the day. In the morning, the gilded passages might glow softly. By evening, under warm indoor lighting, they can appear to smolder with an inner fire.
This is not decoration for its own sake. Moskalev uses gold leaf with intention — to represent sunlight on water, the shimmer of a palazzo’s reflection in a canal, or the sacred quality of light that Venice carries at dusk. In My Love Letter to Venice 015, the golden sun seems to radiate warmth across the entire composition, pulling the viewer into that precise moment of Venetian golden hour.
The technique requires careful planning. Gold leaf must be applied at exactly the right stage of the painting process — too early and subsequent layers obscure it, too late and it sits on the surface without integrating into the composition. Moskalev’s classical training at the Penza Art College, where he studied techniques stretching back centuries, gives him the foundation to work with this demanding material.
Gondolas as Emotional Anchors
Throughout the collection, gondolas appear not as tourist attractions but as emotional anchors. In My Love Letter to Venice 007, a gondola becomes a quiet silhouette against the softened glow of night — carrying stillness, mystery, and the quiet poetry of the dark canal.
Moskalev paints them with economy and feeling. A few confident strokes suggest the curve of the bow, the lean of the gondolier, the gentle wake trailing behind. These are not photographic records. They are impressions, captured the way a melody might linger after the music stops.
Scale and Intimacy
The Venice collection spans a remarkable range of sizes, from intimate 30×40 cm studies to monumental 100×150 cm canvases. The larger works, like My Love Letter to Venice 029, have the presence to anchor an entire room — their café lights and canal reflections creating an immersive atmosphere at any scale.
Meanwhile, the smaller pieces offer something equally powerful: the sense of a private moment captured. A single bridge. A quiet canal at dawn. A campanile rising against a clear sky. These works reward close viewing, where Moskalev’s palette knife textures and layered glazes reveal themselves in rich detail.
Bringing Venice Home
Browse the complete My Love Letter to Venice collection, or contact us to discuss a specific piece or commission.
