Biography

After the end of the Second World War, he received training at the Surikov Institute in Moscow. During this time he became acquainted with works by Cézanne and other Western artists. Kabakov made his first drawing studies that showed natural landscapes. In 1957 he completed his training as an illustrator. He then found a job as such and worked on children's books. In 1965 he joined the Union of Artists of the USSR. Around this time, his apartment in Moscow was already becoming a secret meeting place for artists critical of the regime.

From 1978 onwards, Kabakov himself produced works that criticized socialist realism in prescribed regime art: these were creatively made picture walls with conceptual texts in a parodying protest stance that confronted a stubborn Soviet administration. His pictures, collages and installations from this period deal with the social living conditions in the USSR, with the mentality of the country, but also with the everyday difficulties of people as well as with the state's utopias regarding society and architecture. The artist was unable to make his critical and parody works, which themselves dealt with the prescribed art world of the Soviet Union, known to a larger audience in an exhibition, but they nevertheless reached the West via mysterious routes.

There, in the Schweizerische Kunsthalle Bern, 25 pictures and 490 drawings were shown for the first time in 1985. This exhibition made Ilya Kabakov internationally known. Two years later he went to the west on a three-month scholarship from the Kunstverein Graz, where he stayed. In 1988, Kabakow and his wife Emilia moved to New York, where he still mainly lives and works today. The following year, the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD awarded him a scholarship and he presented his works in Paris at the Center Pompidou. From 1992 he came to the Städelschule in Frankfurt/M. a teaching position for one year. This year he exhibited at the Kassel documenta. Over time, Ilya Kabakov made a name for himself primarily as an exhibition artist, managing a considerable number of public presentations every year.

His awards include the 1990 Aachen Art Prize, the 1993 Max Beckmann Prize, the Swiss Joseph Beuys Prize and the Honorary Diploma from the Venice Biennale, as well as the Goslar Kaiserring in 1998.
- IMDb mini biography by: Christian_Wolfgang_Barth