1928-2017

Sabur Mambeyev is one of the founders of modern Kazakh painting, whose distinctive style is characterized by the psychological depth of his portraits and the laconicism of his visual language. Orphaned at an early age, the artist spent his childhood on the outskirts of Almaty. During World War II, he entered the Alma-Ata Art School, where he studied with Moldakhmet Kenbaev, Zhanatai Shardenov, and Gulfairus Ismailova. He later graduated from the I. E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1953). In the following years, the artist studied at Senezh, an experimental creative workshop near Moscow, where he studied Kazakh folk art.