He was lucky enough to serve in Fleet's headquarters in Severomorsk, Murmansk Oblast, where administration paid special attention to the navy men's cultural entertainment.

It was in the fleet's fine arts studio where he saw works of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Aleksander Rodchenko and found out about modernism and Russian avant-garde for the first time.

Among distinguishing features of Khvostov early works were processing of themes and artistic devices in consecutive stages and experiments with materials.

Through "the New Stupid" Khvostov got acquainted with fine art experts Gleb Ershov and Andrei Klyukanov who at that moment worked in Navicula Artis gallery.

These works led to Khvorostov getting an order to paint a multi-figured portrait for the anniversary of the "Leningrad Art Critics Club", founded by Ivan Chechot.

This project, named "Memorial of leaders", included portraits of Leonid Brezhnev, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Marilyn Monroe, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Jesus Christ, Mao Zedong and Ernesto Che Guevara with Vladimir Putin being the pivotal figure of the series.

In his absurd Leniniana the artist played with the scenes of Isaak Brodsky, Arkady Rylov and Kukryniksy by making Napoleon Bonaparte, Stalin, Hitler, robotic Venus de Milo, Rome imperor Nero, Titanic and himself its main characters.

The "New Leniniana" was presented for the first time at the exhibition organized by "Navicula Artis" gallery and Pushkinskaya 10 Art Centre in the Razliv Lenin Museum.

[13] Its aim was to introduce citizens to daily necessities of the past, provided by different Saint Petersburg museums, by locating them in the same display area along with contemporary art objects.

[4] Oleg Khvostov got acquainted with Marat Guelman after the "Memorial of Leaders" exhibition, signed a contract with his Gallery and moved to Moscow.

It also included around 40 artistic interpretations of classical paintings from Leonardo da Vinci and Tiziano Vecellio to Julien Dupré, Orest Kiprensky and Zinaida Serebryakova.

[31] On return from Gridchinhall Khvostov rented a studio on the territory of an ex-factory "Red triangle" and started working on his new series of landscapes.

[6] Khvostov used the following material for copying — The Nude Maja by Francisco Goya, Venus of Urbino by Tiziano, Sleeping Venus by Giorgione, Sistine Madonna by Raphael Sanzio, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio, The Flight into Egypt by Rembrandt, The Rape of Europa by Claude Lorrain, Grove of Ship Timber by Ivan Shishkin, Poor Liza by Orest Kiprensky, Dmitry Levitsky’s portraits, Music by Henri Matisse and Black Square by Kazimir Malevich.

She believes that it was an inheritance of traditions of the Leningrad necrorealism of the 1980s that brought along a harmonious cooperation of Khvostov and others from "the New Stupid" both art groups grew from the "New artists" movement.

Narrow bounds allow to focus on a single object, investigate his psychologyPortraits and self-portraits and lavender landscapes, borrowed from impressionists and postimpressionists, hold a special place among cross-cutting themes of Khvostov's art works.

Among Khvostov's portraits Pilikin emphasized his taste for illustrating political leaders, public men, people of religion and mass art as another cross-cutting theme, for the artist considers them to represent the spirit of his times.

[39] In her interview for the online-journal "Bohemian Petersburg" poet and artist Irina Dudina named some specifics of Oleg's works the following way: blue and green faces, Peterburg-style elegant primitivism and quite pushy avant-garde.

[40] Anton Uspensky, leading research associate of the State Russian Museum Department of the new wave, compared Khvostov's style to the basic Adobe Photoshop tool — gradient, by the means of which he fills canvas with various geometric forms.

Pilikin also added planes and cows to the list of important elements of the artist's visual language, which appeared in his works after the year spent in Gridchinhall.