As the artist himself jokes, his love for art derived from the fact that his grandmother was kissed by Marc Chagall in her childhood. She was his younger sister’s classmate, and often visited the Chagall household. In paintings
from his childhood and early youth, Molev showed an inclination
towards unconventional compositions that were free of the Soviet canons of “Socialist Realism”. In the mid-1970s, as an aspiring young artist, he took drawing and painting lessons under the apprenticeship of Moscow sculptor Tatyana Vishnyakova.
