Lebyazhye village, Kirov region, USSR 1930-1982 Almaty, Kazakhstan

(1930, Lebyazhye – 1982, Almaty) Evgenii Sidorkin’s visual language is ingrained in Kazakh cultural memory through his 1958 illustrations for Kazakh Folk Tales, a book cherished in many households. It featured his vivid series of lithographs Cheerful Deceivers, now on view in Qonaqtar. The works depict mythological character Aldar Kose and other cunning, mischievous figures who speak truth to power and embody the wit, resilience and humour of Central Asian oral traditions. The series also earned Sidorkin international acclaim, winning a bronze medal at the Leipzig Book Fair in 1959. Sidorkin was born in Russia and studied in Kazan, Riga and at the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute of Arts, where he met his future wife and long-term collaborator, Kazakh artist Gulfairus Ismailova. After they both settled in Almaty in 1957, his work developed in dialogue with local cultural heritage. Also on view in Qonaqtar is his 1964 series Reading Saken Seifullin, which reimagines the legacy of the revolutionary poet – later silenced during Stalin’s purges – through a modernist visual language. From printmaking to public art – including his sgraffito mural for the former Tselinny Cinema,Sidorkin’s practice consistently fused ethnographic research, folklore and formal innovation, shaping how Kazakh identity was visualised in Soviet culture.