Ilya Kabakov Ilya Kabakov, Pioneering Installation Artist and Gimlet-Eyed Critic of Russia, Dies at 89

ARTnews May 28, 2023

Ilya Kabakov, an artist whose expansive works sharply directed their aim at the imploded dreams of the Soviet Union, ushering in new possibilities for installation art in the process, died on Saturday at 89. His death was announced by his family that same day.

In vast installations, Kabakov took up the many failures of the Soviet Union, where he lived for decades before departing for the West in 1987. By building out the worlds of imagined characters via room-size artworks, Kabakov offered heightened versions of the reality he lived for viewers across the globe.

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