Vinogradov and Dubossarsky, both 44, also emerged in the 1990s, with canvases in which they exploited their training in the strict Socialist Realist figurative tradition to depict imagery from popular culture. Their paintings, featuring an airbrushed look and often dreamy pastel colors, are particularly market-friendly, so it’s not surprising to hear considerable auction buzz about them. Their record price came at Phillips last June, when Night Fitness, a 2004 painting of a woman doing push-ups in a swimming pool, went for £132,000 ($263,000), against a high estimate of £20,000 ($39,556). The duo seems to have a sense of humor about their success. Two years ago they made news when they had a major exhibition at a yacht club outside Moscow and employed a team of eight prominent Russian businessmen to create a painting under their instruction.

As for the St. Petersburg–based Mamyshev-Monroe, 39, his first taste of fame came when he covered Moscow with posters of himself imitating Marilyn Monroe, his namesake. Three years ago, for a show of Russian Pop art at the Tretyakov Gallery, he remade Warhol’s Marilyn silkscreens with himself in the starring role. And he recently won the Kandinsky Prize in the new-media category for a video in which his visage replaces that of an actress in a well-known Russian film from the 1930s. A 2006 photograph in which Mamyshev-Monroe presents himself in the guise of Queen Elizabeth I just set a record of €10,000 ($14,700), against an estimate of €4,000 ($5,800), at a charity auction Phillips held during Moscow’s recent luxury-goods expo, Millionaire Fair.

But the “starz” who have risen most dramatically in the past year are the members of AES+F. The Moscow-based collective, formed in the mid-1980s, includes Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes. Their slick digitized videos and photographs have lately portrayed preteens in poses worthy of Gap ads, dressed like warriors and doing slow-motion battle in a postapocalyptic landscape. Last Riot, a three-channel video of that scenario set to a Wagner sound track, was among the biggest crowd-pleasers at the Venice Biennale last summer. Many have attributed the group’s success to its representation by Triumph, a Moscow gallery that recently transitioned from showing Old Masters to bringing work by Damien Hirst and other international art celebrities to a Russian audience.

Perhaps the proof is in the prices. Most contemporary Russian artists do not yet command what their European and American peers do. AES+F is the exception: Last Riot is now entirely sold out, and the gallery is considering hawking artists’ proofs for around $400,000. That is about what you’d pay for a modest-size work by American video-art superstar Bill Viola.

In a country with little art infrastructure, biennials are crucial, as evidenced by the lift that Venice gave AES+F. Performance and installation artist Andrey Bartenev is another graduate of the 2007 Russian pavilion there. Since that appearance, he has become virtually ubiquitous on the international scene, showing up at parties in his eye-catching, outrageously patterned bodysuits. In January, London’s Riflemaker gallery opened Bartenev’s first solo show, which consisted of a version of the piece he presented at Venice, Disco-Nexion, an installation of mirrors, glass and colored lights that creates an infinity effect and is meant to comment on the perils of electronic communication. Riflemaker director Tot Taylor says the show sold out within 40 minutes of the opening. “There is a mad rush for his work in London,” she adds.

Even though the Moscow scene is heating up, the support of gallerists abroad is crucial if these artists are to make their names internationally. Impressed with the Russian pavilion, Rachel Lehmann, co-director of the New York gallery Lehmann Maupin, wasted no time in visiting Moscow’s artist studios. There she discovered the Grozny-born Alexey Kallima, 38, who makes figurative drawings and frescolike paintings, many of them depicting the Chechen struggle, and Kirill Chelushkin, 39, who became known for large, meticulous landscape drawings and now constructs elaborate sculptures from Styrofoam onto which he projects such imagery as the changing Moscow cityscape. Lehmann plans to show both artists in New York over the summer.