Nikas Safronov, a Russian artist recognized for celeb portraits and self-promotion, revealed final week the portray of Donald Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin commissioned from him as a present for the US president.
He confirmed CNN a picture of the portrait, which depicts Trump after July 2024 assassination try in opposition to him, with blood on his face, fist raised defiantly, in opposition to the background of a US flag and the Statue of Liberty. “It was vital to me to point out the blood, the scar and his bravery through the try on his life,” Safronov instructed CNN.
Safronov mentioned that whereas he suspected from the outset that Putin had ordered the portrait, he didn’t know for certain till the Russian president contacted him on to convey the significance of the order.
Additional confirming the origins of the portray, the Telegram channel of the Kremlin pool journalists for the state information company RIA Novosti posted Safronov’s portrait with the phrases: “The very portrait that Putin gave to Trump.”
Steven Witkoff, considered one of Trump’s envoys in a White Home marketing campaign to dealer a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, instructed conservative commentator Tucker Carlson: “President Putin had commissioned a good looking portrait of President Trump from the main Russian artist and really gave it to me and requested me to take it dwelling to President Trump.” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for Putin, confirmed to reporters on the time that the Russian president had given “a completely private present” to “his American colleague”.
The US peace proposal is on Russia’s phrases, with Ukraine ceding Crimea and different Russian-occupied territories. On Thursday of final week, Russia launched considered one of its deadliest strikes on Kyiv since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022.
Putin, the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and the late Pope Francis are among the many world leaders whom Safronov has immortalised in portraits. Putin bestowed the title of “Folks’s Artist of Russia” on Safronov in 2021 for “nice advantage within the subject of wonderful artwork”.
A comparable portray, with some completely different particulars and by an unknown artist, displaced an official portrait of former President Barack Obama within the Grand Lobby of the White Home earlier this month.
In March, Trump denounced a portrait of him in Colorado’s state Capitol constructing by the artist Sarah Boardman’s as “really the worst”, resulting in its elimination. Safronov, in feedback to the Russian tabloid Life.ru printed on 24 March, in contrast the Trump picture by Boardman to provincial Soviet portraits of collective farm chairmen, mentioned he may do a greater job and supplied the assistance of Russian artists in coaching their American counterparts.
“The portrait of President Trump has no character or soul,” he instructed Life.ru. “It seems unnatural, someway swollen. In Soviet occasions, such portraits of collective farm chairmen have been painted for village golf equipment, and within the cities such artwork was not acceptable.”
Safronov has lived in Italy and painted quite a few scenes of the nation. Russian media reported on the artist’s February viewers with Pope Francis. Within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, Safronov labored for the Russian version of Penthouse journal. He has appeared nude in extensively circulated photographs, brags about his sexual exploits and boasts of his 17-room, 7bn Ruble ($84.7m) penthouse close to the Kremlin, which he says he’s prepared to the state.
Olga Galaktionova, the director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fantastic Arts, confirmed to reporters final month that the museum had acquired a Safronov work for its analysis assortment (relatively than essential assortment) below her predecessor, Elizaveta Likhacheva, who was ousted in January.
