With the fall of communism a new generation of figurative Russian artists has emerged. They have been able to embrace the freedoms of European travel absorbing new influences, which combined with their Russian heritage and sound academic training has produced an international style of painting. This summer, the gallery showcases the work of four contemporary Russian artists whose work is achieving wide-spread recognition beyond the borders of Russia.

Dmitry Lisichenko was born in Moscow in 1976 and graduated from the Moscow Art Lyceum and Moscow Academy of Art in 2001. He has exhibited regularly in the UK since 2002. Founded in the 1920s the Moscow Academy of Arts is one of the few international institutions which upholds traditional academic standards including extensive drawing from the life model. Here, Dmitry studied under the guidance of the well known Russian artists Evgeny Maksimov and Ivan Lubennikov. He has developed his own enigmatic style of painting, a form of romantic realism. Velasquez, Degas, Modigliani and the Russian, Ilia Repin have all been major influences on his work.

His paintings focus on a young female model, often his wife Maria, placing her in an interior setting. The works are painstakingly built up from life drawings and sketches. Various props provide a narrative content, conjuring a particular mood and alluding to a world outside the domestic interior. The paintings have a mysterious quality, the young woman often appearing locked in her thoughts dreaming of a world beyond her immediate setting. Historical allusions merge with contemporary life. Lisichenko’s work is now widely sort after by international collectors.

Tatiana Struchkova was born in Orenburg , Russia in 1968 and graduated from Moscow Academy of Art in 1997. She has exhibited regularly in the United Kingdom since 1999. Like Dmitry, whom she knows well, Tatiana was also strongly influenced by her academic training. She uses a life model as the basis of her paintings and while she is a superb portrait artist, these works go well beyond traditional portraits. She has developed her own distinctive style with its translucent paint and rich layers of glazes which she describes as ‘romantic symbolism’.

The paintings have a detached, edgy feeling the figures seem removed from the viewer their features, often in profile, strongly lit against a dark background. An emphasis on pattern and symbol, reminiscent of medieval painting pervades the work. Indeed Holbein has been a major influence. Struchkova’s paintings are much sort after internationally and she has undertaken numerous portrait commissions in Europe and Russia.

Asya Feoktistova is an Artist and stage designer born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia in 1967. She graduated from the Moscow College of Art in 1986. Following her graduation, her work as a theatrical designer was a liberating influence on her development as an artist, pushing her to experiment in different directions, to employ broad sweeping brush strokes and to work on a monumental scale. Another major influence on her work was the Russian artist, Oleg Bordey. Asya describes her work as ‘colorful realism’. While it has its roots in traditional artistic practices, it is also embraces very contemporary idioms. In particular, her dramatic colour harmonies and dynamic sense of movement. The French Post-Impressionists George Roualt, Pierre Bonnard and Odilon Redon have all influenced her work.

Colour acts as an essential tool for her expression, highlighted by the confidence of her dynamic brush strokes. Her paintings reflect the rhythms and flow of her immediate surroundings and the passage of the seasons. They are based on direct observation. Two groups of paintings 'Awaiting the Tulips' and 'Kiwi Time' exhibited in the State Museum of Art in Nizhny, Novgorod in 2006 indicate the promise of the coming spring after the harsh Russian winter. She now lives permanently in Moscow. Her work is collected internationally and is held in collections in Russia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Great Britain, Italy and many other countries worldwide.

Evgenia Buravleva was born in 1980 in Kirov, Russia. She graduated from Viatka Art College in 2000 and Viatka State Humanitarian University in 2001. Following this she attended the Moscow Academy of Art and spent a year abroad studying at the Berlin Art University in 2007. She was awarded a Gold Medal from the Russian Academy of Arts in 2008 and became a member of the Moscow Union of Artists in 2009. Buravleva’s work is expressionistic in feeling. She begins her work with formal areas of colour and from these beginnings the figurative elements, which are often architectural in form, evolve.

She cites Raoul Dufy as a major influence on her work although her colour sense derives from her Russian heritage. The works in this exhibition reflect her recent time spent in Germany and France where she absorbed much of European art and culture adapting these influences to her own Russian idiom. Evgenia's works are in private and corporative collections in Russia and abroad, including the Russian Cultural Foundation, the Museum of the Artists Union and Ferapontov Monastery. This is her first exhibition in the United Kingdom