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He received education at the art college in Alma-Ata from 1948-1951 and the I.E. Repin Art Academy in St Petersburg from 1954-1959. From 1961-1980 he taught at the design department of the N.V. Gogol Art College in Almaty. He was a member of the Artists Union of Kazakhstan from 1963.
The elevated romantic intonation of the arts of the 1960s, the period of hopes and expectation, is excellently felt in Vasily Polyakov's works of art. This filled the life of the young artist who after completing one of the leading institutions of the country, actively started to work. In 1961 at the art college, which was then the only educational institution for fine arts in Kazakhstan) a design department was opened on his initiative. He worked then as a monument designer and is the author of over 20 works of art. Watercolour was always considered a small genre, but it was in the 70s that artists including Vasily Polyakov, declared that they would raise its significance to that of painting. A unit of watercolor artists under the Artists Union was successfully organized.
Vasily Polyakov left behind many landscape pictures of Almaty and the splendid surroundings of the beautiful city, preserving the pictures of the life at that time: slides and Ferris wheel in the park, images of buildings and streets, transport, bus stops, kiosks, recognizable signs of the modest fashion of the passer-bys, still life picture - literally the portrait of modest way of life. Charming and passing states of nature - dusk and dawn, autumn "blazing colour" of the foothills, dull beauty of the thawing snow on trees and streets. Admiration of the beauty of the world permeated by still life with a bouquet of their much loved lilac, which could be colourful and big, or surprisingly lyrical and chamber-like. The fast flowing river of time carried away much of what the keen eye of the artist has for ever captured during the plein-air in Issyk Kul, in trips abroad, which were rare during those days, trip to Creative Work Houses (Baltics, Gurzuf).
Just as most of his colleagues during his time, the artist made trips to the kolkhozes, industrial and construction sites. His heroes dressed in overalls, the Kolkhoz guard, dump truck, huge cranes - were all painted with all the shine of fine lyric and brilliant colouring. Vasily Polyakov left us a wide panorama of life of the 60-70s, which has the added value of being a document of that epoch, painted with such sincerity that touches ones soul.

Vasily Polyakov