Life in Paradise is the first solo exhibition in Petersburg of Natalia Glebova (b. 1951), an outstanding Moscow artist, muralist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts. Glebova belongs to the group of remarkable Moscow authors who came into the spotlight in the 1980s with sincere and profound works that comprehend everyday life. Together with her husband Ivan Lubennikov, she was among those who contributed to the renewal of the artistic language of contemporary figurative art.

The exhibition presents 64 works from the artist's studio, made in the 1990-2020s. The range of subjects in Glebova's paintings is quite wide: she paints herself and members of her family, her dacha, boulevards and streets of her native city – Moscow, ancient Cappadocia, the Greek island of Hydra, Bukhara, Peterhof. Whatever she depicts, the centre of her attention is a human being, his or her state of mind. The artist seeks to capture those moments when her hero and the world are in harmony: it can be creative process (music-making, reading), interaction with loved ones, contemplation of beautiful nature. Painterly manner of the artist gives her works a sense of lightness, saturation with air and light.  Glebova's paintings are like philosophical parables that teach us to see glimpses of goodness and beauty in simple everyday subjects.

The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to appreciate how deftly the artist combines in her works high professional skill with a somewhat naive, simple-minded and reverent attitude to everything that surrounds her.