Daria Kotlyarova

Daria Kotlyarova is a third-generation artist, born and raised in Moscow in a family of painters. Her grandfather, Lev Serafimovich Kotlyarov, was an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR, as was her father, Pavel Lvovich Kotlyarov, who made his name in easel painting. Her mother, Natalia Alexandrovna, is a well-known art historian and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Kotlyarova studied at the Moscow Academic Art Lyceum of the Russian Academy of Arts, named after Tomsky, and went on to the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, where she trained in the studio of Pavel Nikonov. She held a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in 2009–2010, and completed internships in Orvieto, Italy, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

From 2005 to 2007 she took part in the mural decoration of two churches: the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Christ in Zagreb, working under Nikolay Mukhin, and the Church of St John the Righteous of Russia in Moscow, under Alexander Tsarenkov. Since 2008 she has led a creative painting workshop at the State Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. She received the medal of the Union of Artists in 2007 and the Silver Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2014, and has been a corresponding member of the Academy since 2019.

Kotlyarova's painting is built on allegory. The figures in her work are usually easy to recognise — at first glance they read as affectionate nods to old Soviet cartoons, toys and fairy tales. But they turn into symbols of the deeper processes that go on inside a person over a lifetime. Childhood, remembered as carefree and warm, changes when it is looked at through adult eyes: its small familiar objects become complicated, ambiguous artefacts of maturity. Vivid colour and precise realism draw the viewer into a dreamlike space of surreal scenes and characters.

She takes part regularly in Russian and international exhibitions and competitions, and has been awarded at many of them. Her works are held by the Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) in Minneapolis, USA, and the Kaluga State Art Museum, as well as in private collections in Russia, Italy, the USA, France, Serbia and Croatia.