During a recent press conference in Moscow alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that he told Vladimir Putin that relations between the United States and Russia had reached “a low point.”

It’s hard to argue with that observation. Between rumored Russian tampering in the U.S. presidential election, increased accusations of expansionism and global overreach between the two nations, and the U.S. bombing of a Syrian airbase, at which some Russian military were assigned, it seems that the old Cold War has heated up again.

With an ominous cloud of international mistrust and apprehension in the atmosphere, it is indeed a moment of serendipity as a sextet of young Russian painters exhibit at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, Mass.

Curator Ben Shattuck (son of gallery owner Dedee Shattuck) traveled to Russia and interviewed at least a dozen artists from Moscow to St. Petersburg. He noted that “…the Russian art scene is one of the most exciting and well-kept secrets in the contemporary art world.”

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