Painter Valery Antonov was born in 1947 in Omsk, Siberia. He studied at the Omsk School of Fine Arts (1962 – 1963). From 1963 to 1966 he served in the Russian army and then he studied (until 1976) at other schools of Fine Arts of Omsk.

In 1976 he moved to the Vologda region and worked as a teacher at the city’s Technical High School and then for the Union of Russian Painters at the Art Gallery of the Vologda Kremlin. He has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions in Russia and Greece. In Crete, among others, he held joint exhibitions with his wife and painter Nadia Antonova in Heraklion at the Basilica of St. Mark (2005 and 2008).

He has been a member of the Union of Russian Painters of the Soviet Union since 1987 and a member of the Union of Russian Painters (since 1997). He was the representative of Russian painters at UNESCO (2000 – 2002), and in 2006 he became a member of the Club for UNESCO of Piraeus & Islands.