Lena Hades

Lena Hades () (born October 2, 1959) is a Russian artist, writer and art theorist.

She has created more than 40 works, all oil paintings and watercolors dedicated to Nietzsche's book Also Sprach Zarathustra.

An edition of Also Sprach Zarathustra that included 20 Hades paintings from the cycle was published in 2004 in Russian and German by the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The works of the artist are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the National Center for Contemporary Arts, the State Pushkin Museum, and others. The oil painting and graphic cycle "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was exhibited at the First Moscow Biennale of contemporary art.

She currently lives and works in Moscow.

She is best known not only for her Thus spake Zarathustra oil paintng and graphic cyclebut also for her two paintings so called russophobic due to the conflict between public and private spheres erupted in March 2008, when a group of Russian nationalists took an artist to court for these paintings they believe to be inciting “racial or national animosity". One, Welcome to Russia (1999), hangs in Igor Markin’s private museum Art4.ru; the other, Chimera of the Mysterious Russian Soul (1996) was exhibited only once, at a solo exhibition in the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary art in 2005/The nationalists were offended by the artist’s depiction of the Russian soul as a cartoonish creature with clichéd attributes of Russian...
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