Biography
Elizaveta Pugacheva grew up in Russia drawing since childhood, spent years making landscapes to order, and then in 2020 — during lockdown, in a workshop with fewer commissions than usual — something happened. She couldn't sleep. An image appeared: an abstract landscape. She spent the next day trying to make it. "I was completely taken by the process," she has written, "the thick acrylic paint flowing down, choosing its own direction, where I become just an observer. There were no rules, no expectations." That night became the turning point she describes in every account of her practice. The shift from commissioned work to what she calls "conceptual realism" — work that challenges the viewer's perception of ordinary things. She relocated to Dubai in late 2023, and the city entered the work: questions of migration, adaptation, cultural displacement, the way identity shifts when home becomes something you reconstruct rather than inherit. Her own words from Artsy: "I incorporate ornaments, prints, memorabilia fabrics, clothing, and forms taken from my childhood film photographs, as well as references from my grandmother's house in a Siberian village." The palette is recognisably hers: blue dominates — cornflower blue specifically, which she describes as "one of the most enchanting and relaxing colors for the human eye" — in tension with warm oranges that "embody novelty, brightness and sometimes anxiety of change." She works across painting, graphic art and textile panels, combining acrylic, oil, oil pastel and appliqués on linen canvas. The first layer is always acrylic paint flowing freely. After that, she decides what to do with what arrived. She has shown at World Art Dubai, Art Russia Fair, Art Ankara and in galleries across Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Made in the UAE at JD Malat Gallery in 2026 is her first international gallery exhibition.
