Emilia and Ilya Kabakov or "The Russian Soul of New York" - Part 1

Emilia and Ilya Kabakow are among the most important painters and concept artists in the world because they have been surprising this world with original Russian art from New York .

Now New York is not really in the Russian core country; The fact that original Russian art arises here is and should be surprised. Not the only surprising values ​​on the Kabakov and their history-the look into the life of the two artists leads to a miraculous art narrative after the other, garnished with a fine joke and as positive as it is persistent and persistent.

What is certain is that the Kabakovs are among the world's artists, known wherever people can create and appreciate free art (on the most neutral available list of the world's best artists, Emilia and Ilya Kabakov have long been ranked just outside the top 100). A little of the rest, open to interpretation, is recounted below to whet curiosity about art

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's way to art as a professional home

Ilya Kabakow was born on September 30, 1933 in Dnipro, which was called part of the USSR Dnepropetrovsk until 1991 and as part of Ukraine Dnipropetrovsk until 2016. In the big city on the Dnepr (now the fourth largest city of Ukraine with almost 1 million inhabitants) it could theoretically live wonderfully, in mild Mediterranean climate and with the ASOW sea a huge bathtub, which often reached by 30 ° C water temperature in summer. Shouldn't be, today Eastern European dive disturbs peaceful life; At the time of Ilya Kabakow's birth, certainly not:

The Second World War was very close, Kabakov's father was drafted (and later died at the front), Kabakov and his mother were evacuated to Samarkand (now Uzbekistan). From 1943 Ilya Kabakov is said to have visited the art school of the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts, which was also evacuated after Samarkand.

Whatever it came (Kabakov's mother actually had a few more important things to do than to initiate the free art education of the son), that was a brilliant move in the middle of the war to make a 10-year life.

Because in brain research, it is now considered to be well researched and confirms that creative employment creates neurons and neuro compounds that (also) provide a positive mood in humans. It even helps to such a powerful extent in the positive change in the brain (and thus also the rest of the person) that creative employment in trauma therapy has its permanent place today.

Art delighted, perhaps first (in the forced situation, after the tragic event) only to tiny parts/shorter time - in the worst case, the only about maintaining a certain positive, human potential (this is the reason why soldiers are pursuing all kinds of cheerful jobs on the front, which is often perceived as heartless from the outside or from the back).

But Neuron is neuron, in war and in peace; Comfortable experiences/emotions always lead to the release of certain substances; These substances always promote the system of brain connections that do brain and humans well.

In addition, the little Kabakov has lived in an environment with a foreign language since his seventh year (in Samarkand there is Tajik, not Russian or Ukrainian as in Dnjepropetrowsk), so visiting the art school was also a refuge in familiar childhood.

The seeds of "art" had certainly been sown, and after the war, Ilya Kabakov returned to Moscow to pursue further education in this field. From 1945 to 1951, he attended an art school in Moscow, and from 1951 to 1957, he studied graphic design and book illustration at the Moscow Surikov Art Institute (part of the venerable Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, which, after being divided into art and architecture, was dedicated to artistic education), graduating with a diploma.

Kabakov is a qualified graphic designer and book illustrator , who had learned at the two major art universities of his homeland during his training.

He was trained in the then prevailing or prescribed style of "socialist realism" , but is said to have dealt with Cézanne and all other international art, which he could be hostile, and even have made free drawing studies according to nature (for a worker in terms of state forced art).

Whether that was because the little Kabakov had noticed too much old Islamic culture and primeval Islamic freedom to be able to endure socialist realism "optimistically looking a look at a tractor" was to be painted; His urge to freedom will later break unstoppable train.

At first, Kabakov worked very well as a children's book illustrator for a while. But having seen Cézanne alone is such a good argument against the endeavor to spoil their children's books for children about illustration of the socialist realistic world of work that it was not very long: in 1965 he became a member of the UDSR artist association, but he was actually an ideological branch of the Communist Party.

Kabakov gave membership the right to exhibit his works, but by no means the actual possibility. That is why Kabakov's attic apartment in the center of Moscow has become increasingly developed into the center of uncomfortable, different Moscow artists, which are called dissidents in dictatorships and totalitarian states.

A name that is unknown in democracies, because in which everyone can guarantee their opinion and of course pronounced unhindered (not to be confused with anti -constitutional sedition or insults relevant to criminal law, which will follow the half sentence "you will still be allowed to say").

Ilja Kabakow himself developed into a Moscow concept artist who initially reflected on the Russian mentality in his works and addressed the social limits/daily problems of fellow citizens in the USSR. Soon the first utopian building designs were added until Kabakov finally arrived at the social utopias and fundamentally dealt with them. Mostly with a lot of humor and irony, always with (bitter) reference to reality.

From 1978, Kabakov made the first image walls in which he parodyed the "official art" of the Soviet system and which he garnished with the corresponding texts. As a result, the technique of the collage was expanded in his installations, in 1981 it accumulated in the history of the man who never threw something away (installation with various boxes full of papers and sheet music, surrounded by all the other garbage that belongs to the identity of this man).

Kabakov was still there when a group of insurgent capitals started "Moscow conceptualism" These artists wanted to combine western concept art and Soviet SOZ Art (Soz Art is what made pop art threads used according to Russia), they did outside of the official Soviet art work. However, Kabakov was already on the jump; Soon, which he was not allowed to issue in the USSR, in a mysterious way in the West.

In 1985 Kabakov was invited to his first solo exhibitions in France (June 11th to July 13th, 1985, "Ilya Kabakov", Gallery Dina Vierny, Paris) and Switzerland (31.08. November 1985, "Ilya Kabakov: on the edge", Kunsthalle Bern) - 25 pictures and 490 drawings were found there, the artist was unfortunately not allowed to travel.

Kabakov's works of art also wandered to Marseille and Düsseldorf without him in 1986; The first installations in 1986 came to Switzerland for the exhibition "Space installations and images from the 80s" (August 15th-03.09.1986, Neue Galerie, Schlössli Götzental, Dierikon), the "Ilya Kabakov" exhibition was 19.01.1987 in the Center National of the Arts Plastiques in Paris Guest.

For an episode of Tatshots, the reporters visited the Kabakov artist couple in their Long Island at home in New York, where they have been living for over thirty years, while preparing themselves for their first large museum exhibition in Great Britain in Tate Modern (2018):

At the beginning of 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the process for the conversion and modernization of the Soviet Union, which we know under the term perestroika; This was accompanied by Glasnost, literally openness, freedom of information, freedom of speech, one could also simply speak of freedom of expression and press or democratization of the state.

With the works for the exhibition "Contemporary art from the Soviet Union: Ilya Kabakov and Iwan Tchuikow" (20.02. - April 20, 1987, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel, Switzerland), the artist was now allowed to leave, remained through the Graz art association in the west and should no longer return, as long as his home was still called UDSS.

From March 20, 1988 to April 8th, 1988, “rescued” and new Kabakov works were seen in the exhibition “Before Der Dinner” (organized by the Graz Kunstverein) in the foyer of the Graz Opera House; In April 1988, art and artists made the leap from Austria across the Great Pond: 30.04.1988 to June 4, 1988, exhibition "Ten Characters", Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, USA.

This is where Emilia comes into play , at that time Emilia Lekach; A Russian emigrant who has worked as a curator and art dealer in New York since 1975.

Emilia Lekach was born in the USSR in 1945, had learned from 1952 to 1959 at the Moscow Music School, studied Spanish language and literature at the Moskau University of Music to 1966 at the Musikhochschule Irkutsk Music and 1972. Emilia emigrated to Israel with the whole family in 1973. In 1975 Emilia moved on from Israel to New York, where she soon worked as a curator and art dealer. It comes even better and is hard to believe: Emilia Kabakov Lekach was also born in Dnipropetrovsk.

Emilia Lekach and Ilja Kabakov, two people from one of dozens of big cities in a country, the area of ​​which is still 47.84 times as large in today's smaller form as Germany, 7,904 km from this city meet in New York, and they both work in the area of ​​contemporary art.

Man and woman, 54 and 42 years, similar training and passions, similar bad experiences among human rights -considering governments, had even met in youth in Moscow - wouldn't it be rather funny if they didn't get married?

The fact that this story has not yet been processed into a Disney fairy tale is probably due to the age of the protagonists.

Here, no blonde princess "Ich-dream-Noch" meets her apparently carefree future heroes, but two seasoned artists of contemporary art decide to live and work together for many good reasons. Even without Disney, it goes on like a fairy tale, with united strength the two should be fame in a short time:

Free world, free head, good work

Ilja Kabakov stayed in New York and will work with Emilia Lekach from 1989. The artist couple developed a collaborative working style in which each of the two - depending on the project in different proportions - gave their best.

In 1992 Ilja Kabakov and Emilia Lekach became the artist couple and at the latest with this step parts of an artistic working group in which women or men are "half of the artist" (if someone thinks they can express this constellation in a correct gender language: Please, gladly!).

On closer inspection, this working group, which is so often a very special, does not have much spectacular in itself: two people work together (equal, of course) and make sure to use the respective talents as well as possible and to suspend the respective weaknesses as well as possible.

A reasonable basic model for every project that people tackle together and that should work longer without suppression of the partner.