Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov is a conceptual artist, illustrator, and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts. In 2008 he and his wife were awarded the Emperor of Japan Art Prize. He holds the honorary title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture.
Ilya Kabakov was born on September 30, 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk to a locksmith, Iosif Bentsionovich Kabakov, and an accountant, Berta Yudelevna Solodukhina. In 1941 Ilya and his mother were evacuated to Samarkand, where in 1943 he entered the Art School affiliated with the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Repin. Then the family moved to Zagorsk, where the artist's mother remained for many years, and in 1951 Ilya Kabakov enrolled in the graphics department of the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov.
Ilya Kabakov. The Man Who Flew into the Painting. 1998. Installation sketch.
Constant restrictions, lack of personal space, adults imposing their own rules, the impossibility of living one's own life — all this is reflected in the artist's worldview and work. Harsh boundaries and an irresistible desire to escape them are reflected in the image of the protagonist of Kabakov's works — the trembling-with-fear 'little man', perpetually oppressed, powerless before brute force and dreaming of freedom.
The contrast between the suffocating, oppressive narrowness and powerlessness of a person in the real physical world and the awareness of the boundlessness of one's inner self, with its bold dreams and daring — is the main theme of Ilya Kabakov's work.
Ilya Kabakov. The Flying Kabakov.
After finishing his studies in the graphics faculty, the artist worked as an illustrator of children's books, collaborating with the Detgiz publishing house and the magazines Malysh, Murzilka, and Veselye Kartinki.
The conflict between external conformity to rules and norms and the internal desire for the freedom of creativity deepens, and the artist begins to create works "for himself." Making them deliberately non-artistic, he thereby stages a rebellion, at that time hidden from everyone, against everything "beautiful" and "correct", liberating his true personality — introspective, constantly searching for his true self and his path in art.
Ilya Kabakov. Three Russian Pictures No. 2. 2006. From the collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
The artist's first instance was the work "Boy." An ironic parody of the geometric clarity of the Renaissance ideal, it strives to "break out" beyond the edge of the canvas, and in a deeper sense — beyond the borders drawn by the state that seeks to tailor the personality of the Soviet person. The first version of the work was created in 1961.
An important breath of fresh air for Ilya Kabakov were his friends, among whom were Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev, Boris Groys, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Eduard Steinberg, Andrei Monastyrsky, and Dmitri Prigov.
"There arises a consciousness inclined toward cosmism, a special interest in exalted, unearthly, supersensory fluids,' Kabakov recalls. 'Elevated questions... were what all our internal, seemingly the only significant and serious problems revolved around, and for artists — the visual demonstration, their expression.'
Ilya Kabakov. Holiday No. 10. 1987.
At the end of 1967 Kabakov, together with Yulo Sooster, set up a studio in the attic of the former revenue house "Russia" on Sretensky Boulevard in Moscow. In 1968, together with Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev and other nonconformist artists, he took part in exhibitions at the "Blue Bird" café. Some of Ilya Kabakov's works were included in the exhibition "Alternative Reality II" held in Italy. From the early 1970s these works were shown at exhibitions of Soviet unofficial art in Cologne, London, Venice, and elsewhere.
"Russian art, from the icon to our days, wants to speak of another world,' wrote art historian and philosopher Boris Groys. 'And in Russia it is impossible to paint a decent abstract picture without referring to Favorsky's light.'
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Palace of Projects. 1998. Sketch for the installation.
Incidentally, it was the immaterial radiance that fascinated the artist in the 1970s–80s. White, in which Kabakov sees emptiness and light. The emptiness of the white sheet appears to him as silence and quiet, and it is placed above and is more significant than any utterance. The dissolution of objects in the spreading light. Thus were created the albums "10 Characters" and "On Gray and White Paper".
"The frame has special significance in most albums,' the artist says in 'Notes on Unofficial Life in Moscow.' 'It not only accentuates the edge of the sheet, but outlines the edge of that emptiness, the edge of space, at once infinitely deep and at the same time pouring light from beyond that edge here, onto me, onto the viewer.'
Ilya Kabakov. Whose Little Scoop Is This? 1994. State Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Since 1980 Kabakov arrived at a new expressive language — total installations, which over time became ever larger. He himself called them 'total.' Complex to produce, they are universal works combining various forms of art. The author creates a small world, playing on the life and everydayness of communal apartments, into which one can enter and feel like the protagonist of his work, or at least a guest of that protagonist.
Ilya Kabakov. The Man Who Flew into Space from His Room. 1985. Centre Pompidou
He conceived his most famous installation — "The Man Who Flew into Space" — in 1982, and completed work on its creation in 1986.
A small room hung with propaganda posters and drawings of a future catapult-like contraption, modest Soviet everyday life — which the author often satirizes in his works — all together emphasize a crushing oppressive sense of loneliness amid the shouting posters on the walls. The protagonist of the installation is only implied, rather his flight is implied, which may have succeeded or may not have, but the hole in the ceiling tells us that he flew straight out of his room; most importantly, he escaped the suffocating, closed, tiny world of reality.
Ilya Kabakov. Communal Kitchen.
Although Ilya Kabakov himself never lived in communal apartments, his works often deal with the squalor of Soviet communal dwellings as the quintessence of the absence of personal space, passive aggression of neighbors, the general humiliating housing conditions, and absurdity.
Ilya Kabakov. Toothbrush. 1972. Private collection
Since the early 1990s Ilya Kabakov has had dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Europe and America, including in renowned museums such as the Paris Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunsthalle Cologne, as well as at the Melbourne Biennale in Australia and the famous Venice Biennale.
In the 1990s the artist received universal recognition — awards from Danish, German and Swiss museums, the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture, and a scholarship from the German DAAD foundation after which Kabakov moved to Germany.
Ilya Kabakov. Beetle. 1982. Private collection
At the same time he met his relative Emilia Lekach, with whom he began to collaborate and later married. Subsequent works were created together with his wife and signed "Ilya and Emilia Kabakov."
Ilya Kabakov. Deluxe Room. Private collection
In the summer of 2007 at the London sales of Phillips de Pury & Company Kabakov's painting "Deluxe Room" was bought for 2 million pounds sterling (about 4 million dollars). And in February 2008 the work "Beetle" (1982) was sold at the Phillips de Pury & Company auction for 2.93 million pounds sterling. Thus Ilya Kabakov became the most expensive Russian artist of the second half of the 20th century.
