From the noble family of Afanasyev. He was born in Chernivtsi in the family of architect V.Afanasyev.

He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the violin class of Professor B.A.Sergeev in 1972. As a violinist, he worked in many Leningrad orchestras: Radio and Television, the Maly Opera and Ballet Theater named after M.P.Mussorgsky, the Musical Comedy Theater, the State Symphony Orchestra, etc.

At the same time he was engaged in painting and took part in exhibitions of Leningrad nonconformists.

Valentin Afanasyev is known for inventing a unique system of functional ratios of colors and sounds, which makes it possible to perceive music in color. The system of color-sound relations includes the discovery of patterns that must be obeyed by certain groups of colors for the adequate manifestation of the algorithm contained in the musical notation. The spaces of melody and tonality of functional relations are defined. For the first time in history, it has been shown that the same sound can be characterized by three different colors depending on the spatial positions they occupy.