Winner of The Touch Sand-Art Festival-2013 in Ukraine (Grand-Prix for best Live Performance and 1st prize for Graphic Drawing on Sand) and Sand-Malerei Festival-2015 in Germany, Daria Kotyukh is today acknowledged as one of Europe’s greatest Sand-Artists. Jury member of The Touch (Ukraine) and Sand Motion (Russia) festivals in 2015, she created the first international community of sand-artists: Sand Active.
Daria graduated from the Saint Petersburg N. Roerich Art School as well as the Stieglitz Art and Industry Academy of the Faculty of Communication Graphic Design. Since 2016 she is a member of the International Association of Designers.
After experimenting with various drawing techniques, Sand-Art and its potential became a true revelation for her. Her passion for drawing, music and stage were realized through live performances with Sand-Art, where the artist’s imagination communes with the music and the narrative in the presence of the audience.
Daria’s style is both graphical and spare. She aspires to perfection in the composition and the transformation of her drawings by employing the strict minimum of means to reveal the depth of the sand-stories on one hand and, on the other, convey all the beauty of the Sand as a material.
Among Daria’s best works one finds Romeo & Juliet on the famous ballet music by Prokofiev (Grand-Prix of the Sand-Malerei-2015 festival in Hamburg), Mozart (Grand Prix of The Touch-2013 festival), Pegasus, The Four Seasons to Piazolla’s music, We remind you (a tribute to WWII), Alexander Pushkin fairy-tales: The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Tale of the Golden Fish, The Tale of the Dead Princess and The Seven Knights and The Tale of The Golden Cock; also Krylov Fables, Aladdin and Nutcracker with the Noir String Quartet.
In 2017-2018 season, she will present Alexander Pushkin’s Fairy-Tales with the St-Petersburg Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and Casse-Noisette with the Pskov Philharmonic Orchestra as well as a series of sand-graphics Lost Masterpieces. In 2019, she will present a world premiere of Peer Gynt on Grieg’s suits with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and Passion of Jesus with the Kammerorchester Basel.
Daria is developping two original sand-productions : The Seasons by Tchaikovsky with the pianist Pascal Amoyel and A Zodiac Legend with the harpist Claire Iselin.