He was a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists (before 1992 named as the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation),[2] regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting,[3] most famous for his lyrical landscape of rural Russia.
Ivan Mikhailovich Varichev was born on 15 January 1924 in the village of Nizhnaya Loshikha, Smolensk Province of the USSR.
In 1942, Ivan Varichev was drafted into the Red Army and took part in the German-Soviet War, which led the Soviet people against Nazi Germany and its allies.
In 1957, Ivan Varichev graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin in Yuri Neprintsev studio, together with Galina Rumiantseva, Zlata Bizova, Ilya Glazunov, Elena Gorokhova, Vladimir Malevsky, Dmitry Oboznenko, Vladimir Proshkin, and other young artists.
His graduation work was genre painting "The Return from mowing"[4] Since 1957 Ivan Varichev has participated in Art Exhibitions.