
Ilya Kabakov
Igor Spivak In the Store 1991, 2003
Provenance: Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov; Sloane Gallery of Art, Denver, Colorado; Armen …

Russian-born draftsman, painter, and conceptual artist Ilya Kabokov creates work that invokes a broad range of human experience, notably that associated with the artist’s own personal history in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. The forms and materials in Kabokov’s work are often symbolic, as in “The Russia Series” (1969), a group of paintings in sandy brown, a color Kabokov supposes would result from the mixing of Russia’s official state color, red, with the sort of bland gray he ascribes to the Soviet Union’s government dominance and generally uniform character. Kabokov’s larger projects are often produced collaboratively with his wife Emilia, and typically comprise of multiple stages, including what he describes as a performative final step when the project is realized, as in The Ship of Siwa (2005), in which a group of children were directed to build a ship according to ancient Egyptian specifications.

Provenance: Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov; Sloane Gallery of Art, Denver, Colorado; Armen Petrosyan; Private collection, California.
EXHIBITED: Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Teacher and the Student: Charles Rosenthal and Ilya Kabakov," September 9, 2004-January 2, …

Russian-born draftsman, painter, and conceptual artist Ilya Kabokov creates work that invokes a broad range of human experience, notably that associated with the artist’s own personal history in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. The forms and materials in Kabokov’s work are often symbolic, as in “The Russia Series” (1969), a group of paintings in sandy brown, a color Kabokov supposes would result from the mixing of Russia’s official state color, red, with the sort of bland gray he ascribes to the Soviet Union’s government dominance and generally uniform character. Kabokov’s larger projects are often produced collaboratively with his wife Emilia, and typically comprise of multiple stages, including what he describes as a performative final step when the project is realized, as in The Ship of Siwa (2005), in which a group of children were directed to build a ship according to ancient Egyptian specifications.