Scene 4 (plate, folio 15) from The Dream of Abu-Said and Wind

Ilya Kabakov

1957-1990

A small color linocut with pencil additions by Ilya Kabakov that stages a single, stylized nude beneath a lamp dripping a single blue teardrop—a quietly absurd, poetic fragment meant to suggest a larger narrative moment.

Seeing it feels like finding a private illustration: a flat, reserved figure with crossed arms stands directly under a lone lamp that sheds one blue drop, its stillness and naive drawing amplified by the wide neutral surround and the artist’s handwritten inscriptions.

Part of Kabakov’s illustrated-book practice, this piece turns modest, folk‑like imagery and text into a narrative device that anticipates his later conceptual installations and his sustained exploration of individual experience under Soviet and post‑Soviet conditions.

Palette

Art Terms

Linoleum cut Print Colored pencil Pencil Figurative Conceptual art Illustrated book Contemporary art

Exhibitions

Iliazd and the Illustrated Book

1987

Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde, 1912–1930

1978

Painters for the Theater

1989

Deconstructivist Architecture

1988