Sergey Kalmykov
Sergey Kalmykov was born in Samarkand. In 1894, his family moved to Orenburg, and in 1909 Kalmykov arrived in Moscow, where he entered the school of artist and theater designer Konstantin Yuon and later attended classes at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. In 1910, he moved to St. Petersburg and trained at the studio of Ilya Repin’s student Elizaveta Zaitseva under Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Kuzma Petrov- Vodkin. In 1935, invited by the Musical Theater of Alma-Ata (now Abay Kazakh State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater), Kalmykov moved to Kazakhstan.
“Would you like to know who Sergey Kalmykov is?” he wrote in his diary, “Very well. An artist, a philosopher, the author of many long books, diaries, biographies, unsent letters, dedications, jokes, and poems. A painter, a drawer, an engraver, and a sculptor. A designer, a calligrapher, a lecturer, an art historian, an Egyptologist. He who sings the praises of Orenburg, an inventor, an eccentric, an admirer of fine things, a dreamer, who makes fantastic art. A great expert in the making of reliefs, an architect, and an archeologist. A bibliophile, a novelist, a satirist, and so on. I come from Asia, Europe, and from the cosmos, too.”1
Kalmykov’s artistic career spanned just under 60 years (1908—1967), and was defined by three of his major areas of interest: theater and everything related to drama; studies from life—landscapes, portraits, and still lifes; and fantasy art, which included illustrations for his own literary works (such as The Boom Factory and Moon Jazz) and the series Majestic Portraits.
To a certain extent Kalmykov’s fantasy art was likely a product of conscious escapism. Born at the end of the nineteenth century and formed as an artist amidst the vibrant scene that developed before the revolution, he was caught off guard by the ideological machine that crushed familiar ways of living and thinking.
His work was permeated by a kind of dualism that showed in every art form he chose. On one side were the theatre designs for specific performances, on the other the reconstruction in his paintings of the worlds of Ancient Egypt and Babylon.
The protagonists of his fantasy cycle include the Gallant Spender, the Great Costume Maker (both with Kalmykov’s own features), and the Costume Maker’s Daughter. From 1944 to 1946, Kalmykov produced an interesting series of paintings with terrifying characters such as a human-bull, an anthropomorphic creature with a pear-shaped face, an elder with donkey’s ears, and a blue humanoid with huge eyes and a thin neck and limbs.
Kalmykov left diaries and albums sewn together from whatever he had to hand (sometimes wallpaper or wrapping paper). His rich artistic legacy was stored in bunches and rolls. He wrote fantasty librettos with intriguing names like Moon Jazz, Sully Hotel, Unusual Paragraphs, Cabinet of Engravings, Magnificent Stories, and The Boom Factory. In his albums, images are mixed with literary texts.
Kalmykov rightfully considered himself a philosopher and a poet, an inventor. “No, I am not insane,” he wrote in one of his many diaries. “I see different worlds. The secrets of nature are revealed to me. I can hear the grass growing. I live among the dazed stars of the universe...” Kalmykov produced paintings and writings that challenged the norms of his time, theorized about “removing the notions of time, so that lines could extend to eternity,” and experimented with technology that resonated with his belief that “reality should be interpreted as a myth.”
Today Kalmykov’s extraordinary figure still captivates the public and specialists, as it did during his lifetime: with his dignified manners and the outfits he made from theater props, the artist always stood out from the crowd. “Imagine millions of eyes looking at you from the depths of the Universe,” he wrote. “And what do they see? Some kind of boring, monochrome, grey mass crawling across the Earth. And suddenly—like a gunshot—there’s a spot of color! That’s me walking out into the street.” The artist’s deliberately odd looks (hand-painted clothes with little bells and elaborate trims) may have been a gesture of protest against the shackles of society and the state, the enforced rules of what was permitted and prohibited.
Erkezhan Omarova
1. All quotes are from Kalmykov’s diaries in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, ф. р-1758.