Alexandra Uryasova is a Paris-based visual artist working at the intersection of contemporary figurative expressionism and pop art. Born in Ulyanovsk, Russia, she has been connected to France since childhood and has made Paris the permanent centre of her creative life and professional practice.
She has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember — but she became an artist not when she mastered technique, but when she began to see: that a yellow fire hydrant on a street corner can be as monumental as a cathedral, and an ordinary road sign can say more about a place than any postcard. Her first painting teacher — who now lives in Chicago — opened that world for her, and the lesson has never left. Since then, in whatever city or country she finds herself, Alexandra has sought out local artists and absorbed their experience: Rome, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Nice, Cannes — each place has left something in her eye and in her hand.
This shift in perception became the conceptual foundation of her work, which she calls the small beauty of the world — a sustained inquiry into what usually goes unnoticed. Alexandra works from real scenes — the streets of Los Angeles, the markets of Paris, the harbours of the Côte d’Azur — but she does not reproduce them. She transforms them through colour, intensity, and a deeply personal visual language. Her influences include Matisse and the Fauves, David Hockney, and Edward Hopper. Like them, she is drawn to the charged surface of everyday life, to the moment when the familiar becomes electric.
Her ongoing series Inside the Studio (2024–2025) grew from a question she kept returning to: what matters more — the result or the process? For Alexandra, real art lives in the process itself — in the doubts, the reworkings, the unexpected discoveries. By making canvases, easels, and tools the primary subjects of her paintings, she invites viewers into a space of searching that is usually kept hidden.
She works across a wide range of media: acrylic, acrylic markers, oil, watercolour, pastel, mixed media, and digital art. Many of her works combine several materials simultaneously — layering, taping, marking — in a way that makes the process visible as texture and form.
Practice & Vision
The conceptual core of Alexandra’s practice is the conviction that beauty is always already present in the overlooked details of our environment — the peeling paint on a sign, the grass breaking through asphalt, the texture of a wall you only notice if you stop. Through these subjects, she speaks about memory, belonging, and the way we inhabit space.
She also works with the human figure: portraits that search for the singular quality in each person, the particular way someone inhabits their own face. Her work moves between the monumental and the intimate, between the street and the studio, always returning to the same question: what does it feel like to be present in this exact place, at this exact moment?
Her stated aim is simple and demanding: she wants viewers, after encountering her work, to begin noticing what they previously walked past — because it is in these details that the story of a place lives, its character, its life, its particular way of being in the world.
Education & Formation
Alexandra holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design from Paris American Academy (2024), where her studies included workshops and residencies in Rome, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Nice, and Cannes. She also holds degrees in Law and Economics from Ulyanovsk State University (2024).
Her artistic formation began early: from childhood participation in international drawing competitions — where she accumulated an extraordinary series of first-place prizes across drawing, painting, and photography — through language studies in the United States (FLS International, CSU Fullerton, 2017 and 2019), to sustained engagement with the French cultural sphere from adolescence onward.
In 2017, she was invited as part of the Russian delegation to the final event of the international cultural exchange project Russia–Europe Young 2016–2017, held in Barcelona — a formative recognition of her early talent on a European stage, and the beginning of a sustained international trajectory.
Professional Status & Rights
Alexandra is registered as an artiste-auteur in France since February 2025. Her works are protected through INPI (Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle), with a selection of key works covered by an e-Soleau deposit (INPI, March 2026), formally establishing priority and authorship.
She is a member of ADAGP (Société des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques) since December 2022 — Member No. 1365530. ADAGP manages her reproduction and public representation rights in France and internationally. She is also a member of the Union of Creative Artists of Russia (2023).
Selected Exhibitions
- 2025 — The Holy Art, Paris Open Art · Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris. Series Inside the Studio. Works included in the international catalogue of The Holy Art Gallery, distributed to collectors, curators and art professionals across London, New York, Athens, Berlin and worldwide.
- 2025 — Espace Turquoise · Port Marina Baie des Anges, Villeneuve-Loubet. Created specially in the framework of the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference. ARTICHOC certificate issued by Association Présidente Hélène Madeleine Mazilenko.
- 2024 — L’Amérique dans les détails · Gymnasium DAR, Ulyanovsk. Thirteen canvases in acrylic markers and acrylic, inspired by a journey across the United States and the Ilf & Petrov classic Little Golden America.
- 2023 — Empathy · Gymnasium DAR, Ulyanovsk. A renewed exhibition reflecting the artist’s personal vision and emotional range.
- 2021 — Aquarium · Youth Contemporary Art Centre, Ulyanovsk (branch of Ulyanovsk Art Museum). Solo exhibition spanning landscapes, abstraction, and portraiture.
- 2019 — All in all · Creative Space Kvartal, Ulyanovsk. First solo exhibition: works across portrait, landscape, and still life in acrylic, watercolour, oil, and tempera.
- 2019 — Group exhibition of young artists · Lenin Memorial, Ulyanovsk.
Since September 2021, a permanent personal exhibition Summer Mood has been on continuous display at Gymnasium DAR in Ulyanovsk.
Contact
alexandrauryasova.com
alexandrauryasova@gmx.fr · +33 7 86 12 79 10
artmajeur.com/alexandra-uryasova
@alexandra_uryasova