Ilya Kabakov

Ilya Kabakov is the most famous living Russian artist and is represented in the collections of many of the world's major museums (Museum of Modern Art, New York, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Musee d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, and others). Ilya Kabakov was born on September 30, 1933, in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia. From 1945 to 1951, he studied at the Art School, Moscow; in 1957 he graduated from V.I. Surikov State Art Institute, Moscow, where he specialized in graphic design and book illustration. During the 1950s, while earning a living as a book illustrator, he was also experimenting with several forms of abstract art. Kabakov became one of the major figures in the Moscow's "underground" community of artists and intellectuals known as the Circle of Conceptualists. During the late 1960s and 1970s, this group produced a wide range of art, from poetry to visual imagery including films. By the late 1980s Kabakov's art had been exhibited throughout Europe, including shows in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and the United States. Further exhibitions, such as the 1992 Documenta in Kassel, Germany, as well as Venice Biennale and Whitney Biennial, both in 1997, received the attention of art critics from around the world and ensured Kabakov's reputation as an artist of international stature. Now a United States citizen, the artist lives in New York.