Irene Nedelay is an American fine artist residing in New York City. She is originally from Siberia where she was born and started to study art. After graduation, she worked as an art teacher, a muralist, a commercial artist, a scene designer, and an illustrator. 
She first rose to prominence as a fine artist in the early 2000s after a series of solo shows in Europe. 
     In 2009, Irene moved to New York City and continued her art career in America. She joined several art groups and participated in numerous group shows with fellow artists. Throughout 2010-2025 she held more than a dozen solo-shows across the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia. She won many awards and became a member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), the oldest fine art organization in the U.S. that includes Mary Cassatt among its historical members, alongside others like Cecilia Beaux and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. 
     In 2024, Kelly Reichardt, a highly acclaimed American filmmaker, chose Irene Nedelay’s paintings for filming a new art heist movie “The Mastermind”. The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palm d’Or. It also screened at the Sydney and New York Film Festivals. 
     At a press conference in Cannes after the world premiere, Kelly Reichardt highly praised Irene Nedelay’s art saying that her "great paintings" created a certain balance to the paintings by first American modernist Arthur Dove, which were also used in the film. 
     Film critics, saying about the presence of Irina Nedelay's paintings in the film, which are displayed alongside works by classic American artists such as John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt, assert that "the unique paintings of the artist Irina Nedelay significantly enrich the detailed, indie aesthetic of the film." 
     Irene Nedelay now lives in New York City and works in her studio.