To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

“Residents in a small town littered with giant potholes may be ready to “crack” the art world – after turning their massively damaged roads into hilarious masterpieces. Fun-natured drivers from Scranton, Pennsylvania have been challenged by an arts group to turn the ugly craters in their neighborhood into pothole art”. – Caters News. Photo: Cereal bowl pothole. (Photo by Caters News)

A sculptural artwork depicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and headless presidents shot by a hooded high school student (not pictured) is seen at the Contemporary Art Museum in Santiago, December 2, 2014. The artwork, part of the “El ladrillo angular” (The angular brick) exhibition, portrays a student fighting against the ongoing continuity of dictatorship because of a political and economic system which has been impossible to destroy, according to “Papas Fritas” the artwork's creator. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

A visitor passes behind the sculpture “Puma-Dentist” made with plastic, wax and original heads of a puma and a hind by Austrian artist Deborah Sengl during an exhibition at the art gallery Deschler in Berlin April 15, 2008. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Submersible “Jiaolong” is put into the sea for the second dive during a series of six scheduled ones to attempt the country's deepest-ever 7,000-meter manned dive on June 19, 2012 in At Sea, Unspecified. The submersible “Jiaolong”, carrying three people, reportedly reached a depth of 6,965 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, on June 19, local time. (Photo by China Foto Press)

Ivan Shamyanok, 90, shaves in his house in the village of Tulgovichi, near the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Belarus March 15, 2016. “My sister lived here with her husband. They decided to leave and soon enough they were in the ground ... They died from anxiety. I'm not anxious. I sing a little, take a turn in the yard, take things slowly like this and I live”, he said. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Alfred Hitchcock (1899 – 1980) in front of a caricature of his profile at a press reception in London for his new film “Frenzy”. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images). 24th May 1972

A museum employee views “Details of Renaissance Paintings (Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1482)” by Andy Warhol at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, Britain, March 2, 2016. The piece forms part of “Botticelli Reimagined”, an exhibition exploring the ways artists have responded to the artistic legacy of the fifteenth century artist Sandro Botticelli, and including over fifty artworks by Botticelli himself. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)