The Russian artist Sasha Neschastnova was born in Voronezh in south-west Russia, but as a baby her family moved to Moscow, where she has lived ever since. She trained as an architect at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, but was always fascinated by drawing, painting and sculpture, and her background in spatial thinking informs her bold and often deliberately flattened visual compositions. From around the age of twelve she travelled widely in Europe with her family, taking in the art and culture wherever she went, and even a serious accident when she was seventeen, which still affects her hands, did not dim her determination to create art.

Sasha’s work explores love, human relationships, social dynamics, and everyday contradictions with a distinctive blend of humour, irony and emotional intensity. Her subject matter revolves around the philosophy of relationships, especially between men and women, examined through everyday scenarios, social stereotypes and psychological contrasts. Her characteristic figures, often rendered without facial features, invite viewers to project their own personal narratives into the scenes. She works primarily in oil and ink, intentionally challenging traditional rules of perspective and compositional logic to emphasise concept over representation.

Since emerging on the art scene in the late 2010s, Sasha Neschastnova has participated in numerous group exhibitions, international projects and art fairs. Her works have been shown in exhibitions such as Talents of Russia and Russian Art Week in Moscow in 2019, the Kryukrinoksy contemporary art fair in Moscow in 2020, and The Mona Lisa Project in Zapopan, Mexico in 2021, reflecting her engagement with both Russian and international art communities.

In her own words, her art is ‘about people, for people’, aiming to provoke emotional dialogue and self-reflection, revealing the unseen emotional architecture of ordinary life. Sasha always talks about love in its many guises, and this is important to understand when viewing her work. Through art she expresses basic feelings, ideas and themes that are relevant and important to modern society. War always begins with ourselves, she believes, and through art she uses logic, humour and emotion she helps her audience to think deeply about our relationships with ourselves and with others.

Sasha Neschastnova’s website can be found here, and her Instagram account here.