Like many members of the Soviet intelligentsia, Lamakh’s artistic career was divided into “official” and “unofficial” practices. For ideological reasons, he could not openly express his genuine thoughts, and thus worked in the underground, searching for a new artistic language and meditating on art, the structure of the universe, and abstraction. This quest culminated in his handwritten philosophical manuscript Schemes.
Lamakh began his studies at the Voroshilovgrad State Art School but was forced to interrupt them during the war. Deported to Germany for forced labor, he endured extreme living conditions that, paradoxically, fostered his spiritual growth. While in a displaced persons camp near Cologne, in the American occupation zone, he painted portraits of Stalin and Roosevelt that were displayed in the camp.
His knowledge of German gave him access to the works of Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer, which he discovered among ruins after bombings. Torture, humiliation, hunger, and despair were endured through an escape into a spiritual world. This was the only way to survive. During that period, Lamakh formulated his idea of the Circle of Eternal Return — ​​the central category of his philosophy, the main pathos of which was “…in a personal attitude to everything, in the awareness of involvement in the Universe. …Belief in the eternity of the moment, in overdetermination, in non-accidentalism took root and remained for a lifetime in the depths untouched by time”. He remained dedicated to this idea for 33 years, starting to take notes only in 1969.
Upon returning to Voroshilovgrad, Lamakh resumed his studies at the art school, this time in the graphics department (having been denied admission to painting). He was assigned to the poster workshop, led by Vasyl Kasiian.
He went on to work in the field of posters. Though his posters did not differ significantly from the political propaganda of the time in either form or content, Lamakh interpreted the medium differently: for him, a poster could function as an “icon”. This perspective allowed him to embrace posters as a form of monumental art, which he felt was closest to his artistic vision.
Lamakh was deeply engaged in civic and professional activities. He served on the board of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR, chaired the Republican Council on Monumental Art under the Art Fund of Ukraine, was a member of the bureau of the monumental and decorative art section of the Kyiv branch of the Union, and held positions in both the republican and all-Union commissions on monumental art. He worked as a senior editor at the State Publishing House of Fine Arts and Musical Literature of the Ukrainian SSR, as a poster editor at the Mystetstvo publishing house, and accepted commissions to design interiors and exteriors of public buildings.
Together with artists Ernest Kotkov and Oleksandr Semenko, he co-authored the triptych Reunification for the exhibition Soviet Ukraine during the Decade of Ukrainian Literature and Art in Moscow. With Ernest Kotkov and Ihor Lytovchenko, he collaborated on decorative panels for Boryspil Airport, as well as on the design of the Palace of Culture Iskra at the Zhdanov Heavy Engineering Plant (Azovmash, Mariupol), among many other projects. He also taught drawing, painting, and composition at the Kyiv evening faculty of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute of Printing, serving as an associate professor in the Department of Book Design and Illustration.
In 2013, the documentary film Valerii Lamakh. The Circle of Life, directed by Anatolii Syrykh, was released.