Ilya and Emilia Kabakov valuation

Ilya Kabakov (1933–2023) was born in Dnipropetrovsk, in Soviet Ukraine, spent the war years in Samarkand and studied graphic design and book illustration at the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. He joined the Union of Soviet Artists in 1959 and for three decades illustrated children's books for part of each year, spending the rest on his own work, which made him the central figure of Moscow Conceptualism: albums of drawings and text about invented characters, paintings in the deadpan style of official notices and charts, and installations. The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, of 1985, is the best known. He left the Soviet Union for a fellowship in Graz in 1987 and settled in New York, where he began working with Emilia Kabakov, born in Dnipropetrovsk in 1945, a trained pianist who had emigrated in 1973 and worked as a curator and dealer. From 1989 they made their work together on Long Island, and since 1997 everything except the paintings has carried both names. Their total installations, whole environments of cramped rooms, corridors and abandoned things, were shown at the Venice Biennale in 1993 as The Red Pavilion and in a retrospective at Tate Modern in 2017.

The paintings are Ilya's alone, and those made in Moscow before 1987, often in enamel on hardboard, are the rarest and most sought after; drawings, albums, watercolours and prints come up more often, and the installations seldom change hands. A work's date, title and the studio's own record are the reference points, and the Kabakov studio's documentation is what buyers ask for. Enamel on board flakes and chips, so Soviet-era works need careful examination for losses and old repairs.