President Putin personally thanked the Russian artist who painted a portrait of Donald Trump and said the US president “enjoyed it very much”.
The Russian leader called Nikas Safronov to confirm that the painting he presented to Trump last month was his work and said it might help to “build the relationship between Russia and America”.
The portrait, revealed this week by CNN, depicts Trump raising his fist in the air after the failed attempt on his life last summer at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Safronov, 69, told The Times he had decided to paint Trump “as I have a lot of respect and sympathy for him … His security wanted him to lay low but despite that he stood up and raised his fist and showed strength, and this made me respect him even more. He was ready to be strong for America, and he pushed the idea that we should make America great again.”
After the attack, Safronov said, he went to church to pray for Trump’s health. “Later on, Steve Witkoff [the US special envoy] told me that President Putin went to pray for Trump’s health as well,” he said. “This is just a natural human reaction.”
Safronov, who is based in Moscow, said he had decided to add the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline to the painting as a metaphor for Trump’s “Make America great again” slogan and to honour the president’s roots in the New York borough of Queens.
The artist said that when one of his clients told him he had a potential buyer for the painting, Safronov thought it might be the Kremlin. A week after giving the painting to the client, he was impressed to learn it had been given to Trump by Witkoff.
Speaking through a translator, Safronov said: “[Putin] said that President Trump enjoyed this work very much and it touched him, and I was really glad.”
He added that he decided not to charge any money for the portrait because “I think that it’s more important to help build relationships, especially when it comes to global politics. I could not possibly imagine charging money for this. These works are priceless.”
Safronov, who has painted portraits of world leaders including Putin, Pope Francis and Kim Jong-un, as well as stars such as Diana Ross, Tina Turner and Jack Nicholson, said he would like to paint another Trump portrait if the president posed for him.
“The small details on his face, they show his history, his hard life, and this is worth depicting in the picture,” he said. “I would like for him to be real in the portrait, not distorted.”
He criticised the Trump painting by the British-born artist Sarah Boardman, which the president recently denounced as “truly the worst” portrait of him. The painting of a puffy-cheeked Trump has hung in the Colorado state capitol since 2019.
Another painting Safronov would like to improve is Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of the King, which shows Charles in a sea of red. “I wasn’t very pleased with such a blood-like background and I would like to depict him with all the majesty and all the honour that I have for him. I would like to redo it and portray him in a way that he deserves to be portrayed,” Safronov said. “I have actually met him briefly and I saw him as a very pleasant person.”
Another one of his dream subjects is the Irish-American actor Pierce Brosnan.
In February, Safronov visited Pope Francis in the Vatican to present his paintings of him and the Basilica de San José de Flores in Buenos Aires, the Pope’s childhood church. “The Pope was very impressed with this painting and he even shed a tear,” Safronov said. “This painting touched him.”
