Aidan Salakhova. From the New Saints Series.

Aidan Salakhova is a famous Russian painter and sculptor, pedagogue, recent active gallery owner and public figure. Her career in recent years has been marked by sharp turns and a decisive change in artistic reference points, which did not prevent Aidan Salakhova from constantly remaining in the center of attention of both Moscow and the entire world creative audience.

The New Saints cycle presented at the exhibition was created by Aidan Salakhova quite recently. Its idea was born in the Moscow hospital "Tsaritsyno", where the artist was in quarantine in the "red" zone in 2020, after returning from Italy. What she saw in the hospital was embodied in a series of paintings. While observing the doctors' work and admiring their dedication, Aidan Salakhova took numerous photographs and sketches, which were later used in the process of working on the New Saints series. Heroines of Salakhova, who appear to the viewer as part of a kind of imaginary iconostasis, are impersonal and faceless. However, their poses and gestures are expressive, which speak of the author's ability to choose the right“freeze frame” in an endless stream of moments.

Seven works - five united in the New Saints series and two independent, but close to this cycle in design and time of creation - are part of the gift to the Russian Museum by the art collector Vladimir Nekrasov, a longtime admirer of the Aidan Salakhova’s talent.