Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Biography
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are Russian-born American artists who have been collaborating since 1989. Their paintings, texts, and installations imaginatively address the downfall of utopian society, by exploring Soviet-era culture and figures such as El Lissitzky. “Fear is the reason for making art,” Ilya Kabakov has remarked. “It is a means to freedom.” Born on September 30, 1933 in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union (currently Ukraine), Ilya Kabakov spent his youth in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he attended the Leningrad Academy of Art which had been relocated during World War II. In 1945, the artist moved to Moscow where he studied graphic design and book illustration. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as an illustrator of government-issued children’s books allowing the artist a more comfortable lifestyle than many other citizens. Born Emilia Kanevsky in 1945 in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union, she studied classical piano at Music College in the city of Irkutsk and later Spanish literature at Moscow University before emigrating to Israel in 1973. Relocating to New York in 1975, she worked as a curator and art dealer through the following decade. In 1988, Ilya Kabakov emigrated to New York where he met Emilia, whom he began collaborating with and later married in 1992. In 2013, the couple were the subject of a feature length film Ilya and Emilia Kabkov: Enter Here, which documents their working practice and relationship. The artists continue to live and work in Long Island, NY. Today, their works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
(53 results)
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
How can one change oneself? - How to become..., 1997
Sale Date: November 29, 2023
Auction Closed
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Firma degli artisti sul certificato, 2006
Sale Date: June 29, 2022
Auction Closed