Mission Statement

The Barbarian Art Gallery by Natasha Akhmerova is an international Contemporary Art Gallery located in Zurich and Moscow. The gallery’s main mission 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 and Eastern European Art. We promote art that is challenging, edgy and at the forefront of contemporary practice.

We present masters who have become established in recent historical time as well as emerging artists who are in a phase of confident self-realisation. The Gallery vigorously supports them in the art market by participating in international exhibitions and art fairs. Further to this we invite critics and curators to comment our activities and participate in our projects. We also publish collector’s catalogues, which feature articles by recognized experts in the field. The works of our artists are held in a number of international museums and many have received major prizes such as state awards.

The gallery positions itself as a forum for the exchange of artistic and humanitarian ideas between West and East. As a result of this we have been collaborating with important institutions, such as the Hermitage and the Cabaret Voltaire, with renowned curators, such as Nadim Samman, Viktor Misiano, Olesya Turkina, Viktor Mazin, Adrian Notz, Mario Lüscher and Paolo Bianchi, as well as with well known Swiss and Zurich based Artists, such as Jso Maeder, Hannes Brunner, Trevor Guthrie, Kaspar Toggenburger, Rolf Schroeter, Andres Bosshard, Com&Com and MARCK, among others.

In the last couple of years the Gallery has been organizing leading events such as the special Projects Program of the 4th Moscow Biennale (2011), Rewriting Worlds - Dada Moscow, in collaboration with the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (Adrian Notz) and Digital Dirigible (Nadim Samman).

We also have been participating at the last two editions of the Venice Biennale supporting the collateral projects by Dmitri Prigov (in 2011) and by Alexander Ponomarev (in 2009). In both occasions the Barbarian Art Gallery published an exhibition’s catalogue.

The book Functioning Forms Zurich, featuring Vladimir Arkhipov’s ready-mades, has been recently produced by the Gallery. This publication includes articles by the leading Russian philosopher Valery Podoroga and by the well-known curator Viktor Misiano.

In 2010 Leonid Tishkov’s installation, The Private Moon, won the competition by the City of Zurich, Art in Public Spaces. In the same year the most influential Swiss-german culture magazine DU marked the activity of our gallery by a large article

The Barbarian Art Gallery is member of the association Die Zürcher Galerien.

* ALL THE ARTWORK-IMAGES PUBLISHED ON THIS WEBSITE HAVE BEEN SENT TO THE GALLERY BY THE ARTISTS WITH THEIR AUTHORISATION FOR THE ONLINE PUBLICATION. THE BARBARIAN ART GALLERY DOESN'T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PUBLICATION OF UNAUTHORIZED IMAGES *