Ilya
Iosifovich Kabakov

Schedule. Member of the Union of artists of the USSR.

Was born in Dnepropetrovsk on 30 September 1933 in the family locksmith. In 1957 he graduated from the graphic faculty of the Moscow art Institute named after V. I. Surikov, the specialty of the artist-Illustrator. Since 1956 worked in the publishing house "Detgiz" (later "Children's literature"), magazines "the Kid", "Murzilka", "Fun". Active participant of many dissident art exhibitions ranging from exhibitions 1965-1968 in taquile (Italy), Poznan-Sopot (Poland) and the Moscow cafe "Blue bird" (1968).

Having tried different styles, including abstract expressionism and surrealism, in the 1970-ies found his own style – "romantic conceptualism". His archetypical motif – an ordinary Soviet apartment-communal, immersed in an atmosphere of mysterious absurdity. In her graphic series ("folders") it passes successively from curly, congenial to children's illustration, fantastic and surreal stories to the so-called ALB 1970-1978 (from lat. alba – "white") – sheets, dominated by empty space, with only a "communal" slogans such as "who is kettle?", – and then to "zhekovskogo art" 1978-1982 and "Expo-art" (installation like agitando and wall Newspapers); these works are close satirical parodies of Sots art.

From 1989 lives and works abroad – in Germany, France and the United States. In his works, occupying entire rooms (Garden, 1978, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Nepovolena picture, 1982-1992, Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Man flown away into space from his apartment, 1986, Feldman gallery, new York; a Large archive, 1993, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Ship of my life, 1996, cultural centre Hellerau, Dresden), use their previous ideas to create "absolute installation", immersed in an atmosphere of pure thoughts of the audience, the incentive for which are the texts and signs of the artist. Issued "the first post-Communist Opera" (life with an idiot Alfred Schnittke, from a story by V. V. Erofeev, at the Amsterdam Nederlandse Opera, 1992); its historically-stage was his Red wagon (1990-1991), won all the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993, where symbolically draw a line under the political utopias of the Soviet period.