Kabakov Catalogue Raisonné – serie

Today Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are recognised as the most important living Russian artists. Their multidisciplinary practice, spanning drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, modifies our perceptions of everyday life. Including the public space they extended the concept of installation without creating a new marked definition. While grappling with the pre-modern period from Renaissance art to the 19th century they found their own means of expression. One example is the much-noticed installation The Strange City for Monumenta 2014 at the Grand Palais, the venue of the Paris Photo. The creation of a utopian city abounds with art-historical references in addition to motifs from modern science and represents the synthesis of a long artistic career.

Ilya Kabakov (*1933) is one of the former Soviet Union’s most important and influential international artists today. After the two-volume catalogue raisonné of paintings (2008) and 2017’s catalogue raisonné of installations, we are now publishing a complete overview of Kabakov’s recent paintings. Different ideas, phases, and styles unfold across the 350 works of art, but the artist’s inimitable signature can always be recognised. Visual themes include, for example, the colour white, the relationship between complete and incomplete, and the combination of either various styles or of painting and photography. Still, all of the pieces have one thing in common: they all pursue a conceptual approach and make references to art history.