Vadim Voitekhovitch

Born in 1963 in Mozyr, Belarus, Vadim Voitekhovitch was the son of a Soviet army officer and a mother who worked as a doctor. He grew up in a cultured household, visiting museums and galleries from a very early age. Since his parents opposed an artistic career, which they considered too precarious, he enrolled in 1980 at the vocational art school in Bobruisk, Belarus, to study set design and interior design. After graduating in 1985, he initially worked as a decorator in Tallinn, Estonia—a typical career path in the waning days of the USSR, where independent art remained largely inaccessible outside official channels. It was only after the dissolution of the USSR, in 1991–1992, that he was finally able to devote himself fully to painting. 

Turning to oil painting—a medium that had particularly moved him during his visits to museums—Vadim Voitekhovitch established himself as one of the leading figures in Victorian alternate history and pictorial steampunk. His paintings depict fictional or real port cities in Northern Europe, frozen in a late-19th-century atmosphere where steam-powered airships and impossible machines coexist alongside meticulously researched historical architecture. The contrast between clear skies and dark cities, combined with a pronounced sense of architectural grandeur, lends his works a melancholic and monumental atmosphere that has earned widespread international acclaim.