The next artist to feature in the course of lectures "The Family Tree of Russian Contemporary Art" is Alexey Kallima, who worked closely with the collective Radek and founded the informal gallery France in 2001. A representative of the first post-Soviet generation in Russian art, he was one of the key representatives of "nonspectacular art" in the early 2000s. He became famous as an artist working mainly on the topic of the war in Chechnya, depicted in paintings and drawings, large-scale murals and artistic events. Over time, he abandoned directly political art, creating abstract and pop art objects. Today, he works with a romanticized vision of everyday life, staying true to classical painting.
Kallima was born in 1969 in Grozny and lives and works in Moscow. He studied in the painting department of the Krasnodar Art College. Since 2001 he has been a curator of France gallery. He has shown work at the Venice Biennale (2009, 1995) and the festival "Europalia" (2005), presented special projects at the 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennale (2005, 2007), and has held solo exhibitions in Russia, Europe, and the United States. In 2005 he received the Innovation Award for "Best work of art" for his work Terek – Chelsea.
