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Sergey Kalmykov
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Sergey Kalmykov was an artist, writer, thinker, inventor, poet and professional Genius of the First Interplanetary Category. He was born in 1891 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, then lived in Orenburg, Moscow, St. Petersburg, then traveled around central Russia until he came to work and live in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 1935. He studied painting with Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and, according to research, it was he who gave the latter the idea for one of the most famous symbols of the Russian avant-garde and revolution—the painting "Bathing of the Red Horse", painted in 1912. Even then, Kalmykov's influence and connection with historical events began to manifest itself on some "invisible" level.
In Almaty, Kalmykov lived a lonely life as an unwanted and unrecognized artist, working as a modest designer at the State Opera and Ballet Theater and retiring with a meager salary of 52 rubles. He died of multiple organ failure due to poor nutrition in 1967. Shortly before, his neighbors called the police, who broke into his apartment and found him already dying of hunger. Everyone knew him as the "town madman", so an ambulance took him to a mental hospital, where they tried to nurse him back to health for almost two months, but in vain.
And after his death, a commission from the State Museum of Arts came to the apartment and found more than 1,500 paintings, drawings, linocuts and 10,000 pages of his manuscripts. And they exclaimed: "Oh, God, this was a real "Almaty Van Gogh"! A master! A genius!" His paintings were immediately placed in a museum, his manuscripts in the state archive. And in his manuscripts, Kalmykov wrote about the mysterious principles that he adhered to in his life and his art, which he called "professional genius." He did not have a single personal exhibition, no one considered him a "good artist", but he created every day and knew that he "would remain in the centuries with Da Vinci and Picasso."
In 2022, Kazakhstan presented its first-ever pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art—and this first pavilion, curated and participated in by the ORTA group, was dedicated to Sergey Kalmykov, and all the leading art publications in the world wrote about him, and he will now remain in the centuries. Here again his influence on world events was manifested through a unique philosophy, a system of approach to life and creativity, which Rustem Begenov and Alexandra Morozova called "The New Genius Theory" and which they have been crystallizing in their projects since 2016.
Texts about Sergey Kalmykov
The Van Gogh of Kazakhstan who feigned insanity to escape the Soviets
The country's first ever pavilion at the Venice Biennale plunges you into the eccentric world of Sergey Kalmykov
21 Apr 2022, Lucy Davis, The Telegraph
THE SUPPOSED INSANITY OF A CANDIDATE FOR ABSOLUTE IMMORTALITY
(Notes on S. Kalmykov and the foundation of his life)
2022, Alexander Brener, Catalogue for the Kazakhstan's pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale—The first New Genius Book "Sacred expositions of the Great and Immortal Lai-Pi-Chu-Plee-Lapa".
Feb 2022, Valentina Buchinskaya, Catalogue for the Kazakhstan's pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale—The first New Genius Book "Sacred expositions of the Great and Immortal Lai-Pi-Chu-Plee-Lapa".
Texts by Sergey Kalmykov
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, A Guide to Sergey Kalmykov
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, A Guide to Sergey Kalmykov
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, A Guide to Sergey Kalmykov
Brandishing a platinum baton (a man with frayed nerves)
Poem
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, A Guide to Sergey Kalmykov
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, A Guide to Sergey Kalmykov
8 laws of creating a masterpiece, formulated by Sergey Kalmykov. Translated by Alex Warburton for the book "Guide to Sergey Kalmykov" by ORTA.
2022, Sergey Kalmykov, Cosmic Bulletin