b. 1955, Kaskasu, South Kazakhstan region, Kazakhstan

(1955, Kaskasu – lives and works in Almaty) Yerbolat Tolepbay has been a prominent voice in Kazakh art since he started to exhibit locally and internationally in the 1970s. Known for merging surrealist and modernist aesthetics with Kazakh folklore and myth, he infuses scenes from daily life with existential undertones. A graduate of Abai State Pedagogical Institute (1977), he was immersed in art and craft from an early age, and his older brother Toqbolat Togyzbayev, whose work is also featured in Qonaqtar, was a formative influence. Tolepbay has drawn inspiration from Western artists such as Chagall and Dalí, whose dreamlike imagery helped shape his visual language, yet he always grounds his work in local tradition and colour. A central theme in his work is the threshold – between past and present, memory and myth, the personal and the cosmic. In the painting Hello, My Hearth, a solitary figure stands at a glowing doorway, while the hearth anchors the scene with warmth and intensity. At the opening of the Almaty Museum of Arts, the painting becomes emblematic: the door as an invitation, the hearth as home and the museum as a space of welcome.