Dimensions
158 x 234 x 31mm
Zoia was more than an artist. Her life and her work coalesced into a symbol of Tsarist Russia - its faith and its mystery. Her dramatic escape from the Revolutionary torturers of the Lubyanka, an artistic journey that took in the teachings of Vassily Kandinsky and the excesses of bohemian Paris; and an unearthly ability to command the devotion of beautiful men: these are the ingredients of a mythology that is about to be translated into cold, hard cash. For Zioa's death has suddenly made her work highly collectable; her opulent paintings on gold as enigmatic as their creator.
When Marcus Elliot is hired to write a glossy catalogue for a retrospective exhibition, his task proves far from simple. Zioa's private papers hint at an existence of betrayal, sexual predation and despair. Elliot, whose world has already been touched by Zoia in ways darker and stranger than any collector's, plunges into the shadows of her life determined to understand everything.
