Moscow`s Midnight Prowler has done rather nicely out of his own special brand of GBH.
Just ask Robert De Niro, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson or Francis Ford Coppola. Or even George Dubya and Vladimir Vladimirayavich Putin.
Nikas Safronov`s GBH – genre-busting hudibrastic art – has been mesmerising a growing roll-call of the great and the good ever since the collapse of  the Soviet empire.
The 47-year-old painter`s pictures now adorn the walls of leading art galleries and museums the world over – and the homes of dozens of the most famous names on  the planet.
It`s a celeb`s client list, that has impressed even Who`s Who – they`ve listed him next year in the international edition, one of only three Russians so honoured.
Safonov has exhibited across the globe. And now he`s coming to London, for his first British show.
The exhibition is being staged at the Russian Embassy in Kensington Gardens, on November 5 to 14. The show will include portraits of Pierce Brosnan, Clint Eastwood, Sophia Loren, Al Pacino, and Robert de Niro.
They`re in addition to the celebrity roll-call of portrait subjects who include Clint Eastwood, Monserrat Caballe, David Bowie Francis Ford Coppola, Raquel Welch – and Hollywood A-lister Charlize Theron, star of the Tinseltown remake of the Italian Job. The artist regards himself as a "mystic master of provocation" both in artistic technique and in his own flamboyant lifestyle. Rumours of Moscow late nights spent driving through narrow back streets to showbiz parties and mysterious meetings with oligarchs have earned him the soubriquet "midnight prowler".
Safronov attracted particular opprobrium from the old order because of the unbridled eroticism of his early work. "Me and my Russian clients had to become a bit like spies," the artist recalled at the Dorchester Hotel during a trip to London to arrange his forthcoming exhibition.
"I painted the pictures in secret and they passed the money on to me through the mutual friends. Even the KGB couldn't catch us."

Elena Borissova,
"West End Extra", October 31 2003