1968-1972 Slava completed his Master of Arts with the focus on paintings and ceramic sculpture at The Surikov Institute of Fine Arts in Moscow, USSR

1980 Slava was forced by KGB to leave the USSR after his participation in organizing non-conformist “Buldozer” art exhibitions in Moscow. That was considered an anti-Soviet and pro-Western activity. He was also known for the his ties to pro-American democratic movements and Radio Svoboda

1980-1989 Slava lived and worked as an artist in Sweden and France

1989 Slava began to work as an artist in the US. He worked and traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Alaska and currently resides in Seattle.

Slava Zherdev wrote:

“My Inspiration Comes from the Supreme Power. This is the TRANSFORMATION that I am trying to portray.

I used to spend hours in my early childhood lying on the grass, looking at the moving clouds being transformed in the splendid displays of color and form.

Later, while working at the Academic Institute of Biophysics, I studied the structure of different biophysical bodies and enjoyed observing their colorful motions directed by the Supreme Energy.

It was in Norilsk, in the polar region of the USSR, where I could not force myself to leave the scene of Northern Lights gleaming as colorful flaming bursts. I felt like being in a frosty night, right in the middle of a slow disappearance of a quiet infinite expanse.

This was how my personal vision of life creation was forming. While studying to become an artist, I couldn’t portray material objects by simply imitating them as I was taught to, because I saw them differently—at the angle of space and time. I thought that I had seen the very essence of material objects, their spiritual structure, the movement in time that never stops, their continuous transformation from one state to another.”