Nikas Safronov

Biography

As a young man, Nikolai Safronov spent eight months studying icon painting in Zagorsk. It was one of several attempts to find his calling: before that he had spent a year at the Odesa nautical college, where he went after the eighth grade of school in Ulyanovsk.

Later he would sign himself Nikas.

He was born on 8 April 1956 in the Konno-Podgorodnaya sloboda, which became part of Ulyanovsk in 1961. In 1973–1975 he studied painting at the Grekov Art School in Rostov, and at the same time worked as a props maker at the Rostov Young Spectators’ Theatre and earned extra money as a night watchman, a yard keeper and a loader. He did not manage to finish: in 1975 he was called up to the missile forces and served in Valga, in the Estonian SSR. He received his diploma from the Rostov school much later, in 1985. After the army he went to Panevėžys, his mother’s home town, where he was an artist at Donatas Banionis’s theatre and, alongside that, a textile designer at the linen mill. It was there, in 1978, that his first exhibition was held. From 1978 to 1982 he studied in the applied art faculty of the State Art Institute of the Lithuanian SSR in Vilnius, and in 1983 he moved to Moscow and graduated in painting from the Surikov Art Institute. To my mind, his early years are best described by the list of towns itself: Ulyanovsk, Odesa, Zagorsk, Rostov, Valga, Panevėžys, Vilnius, Moscow.

Since the late 1980s Safronov has also worked abroad, spending long periods in Italy and Britain. In the 1990s and 2000s he was art director and chief artist of several magazines, among them “Diplomat”, “Mir zvyozd” (World of Stars) and “Moskva i moskvichi” (Moscow and Muscovites).

Portraits brought him fame. He paints actors, musicians and public figures, and his sitters include Vladimir Putin and a number of presidents of former Soviet republics. In April 2025 Putin gave Donald Trump a portrait of him by Safronov. He paints in other genres too. His painting is associated with symbolism and surrealism, and he calls his own direction “Dream Vision”: in it a realist manner is combined with Cubist forms, medieval austerity and Baroque profusion.

In 2012 Safronov became a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, in 2013 an Honoured Artist of Russia, in 2017 a People’s Artist of Dagestan, and in 2021 a People’s Artist of Russia; on 8 April 2026, his seventieth birthday, he was awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky. He is a professor at Ulyanovsk State University and, since 1998, an honorary citizen of Ulyanovsk. He also supports his home region as a patron: with his involvement a chapel of St Anne was built in the village of Vyshki in the Ulyanovsk Region and a monument to Arkady Plastov was put up in Ulyanovsk, and Ulyanovsk Gymnasium No. 65, which he sponsors, bears his name.