The Mission of the Gallery




The primary focus of the gallery is to provide an international platform for emerging and mid-carrier artists from Russia and post-Soviet countries in order both to foster their carriers and to represent to the international art world the vibrant and dynamic art scene developing in these countries. We also open our space to select non-Russian artists of exceptional imagination.

In addition to our exhibitions, we publish catalogues of our shows and regularly present cultural programs, including gallery lectures, concerts and performances, in our effort to enrich the dialogue between the artists and the Western audience.

Since we strongly believe in the inspired creative energy and innovative potential of Russian art, we are committed to working to diminish its relative isolation from the Western mainstream art world, caused by well-known political and historical conditions.

We are committed to the highest technical and quality standards: the field is certainly large enough to include a sufficient number of unknown masters of their craft. Therefore we can afford to choose artists carefully, assuring that the professional skill level of any artist we exhibit is at the level that allows him or her to freely articulate new concepts that challenge the established boundaries of accepted norms.

Natasha Akhmerova’s Barbarian Art is an international gallery based in Zürich and Moscow and active worldwide. The artists of the gallery live all over the world and work a wide variety of media; all have achieved a high level of mastery and merit wider recognition.





Most of the artists the Gallery represents live in Russia, but an increasing number live elsewhere in the world. Believing strongly in its artists, the Gallery vigorously supports them in the art market, by participating in art fairs and biennales throughout the world, inviting critics and curators to comment on and participate in its projects and by publishing collector’s catalogues for its shows, that feature articles by recognized experts in the field.


Our work extends far beyond the generous exhibition space of the gallery. Our artists deliver lectures at universities, offer performances at art events, and we encourage them to exhibit their art in other venues throughout the world. The works of both our emerging and established artists are included in museum collections worldwide and many have received major prizes and state awards. The Gallery also functions as an educational institution for the city of Zürich, where we organize live readings, host events put on by non-commercial art organizations, and schedule lectures on a wide range of topics.


The owner and curator of the Gallery is Natasha Akhmerova. She graduated from the Plekhanov Academy of Economics, then worked at the magazine Business Online where she was in charge of business development. Natasha is also a photographer. She has been an art dealer for five years, amassing a substantial collection herself, and has collaborated with Moscow art galleries specializing the Russian avant-garde, including Constructivism, Modernism and other contemporary. She opened Barbarian Art in 2003 and chose Zürich because of its central location on the continent, its historical openness to ideas, and as the home city of Art-Basel.


The main mission of Barbarian Art has been to bring wider recognition to underappreciated master artists of the post-Soviet period, and a desire to bridge the gap between the markets and mentalities of Western European and Eastern European art. This mission has since expanded to include the promotion of outstanding artists from elsewhere, including North America, but it remains the central focus of the Gallery.