Sanya Kantarovsky was born in Moscow in 1982 and emigrated to New York City when he was ten years old. He still lives and works in New York today. His paintings present scenarios that are at once arresting and alluring.
Sanya Kantarovsky, Basic Failure, 2026
©Sanya Kantarovsky. Photo: Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist, Capitain Petzel, Modern Art and VeneKlasen.
Notionally figurative, they reflect an elastic idea of how the body might be represented through paint, as figures appear in unlikely juxtaposition with other bodies and beings—even morphing into plant or animal forms—and occupy landscapes and spaces that are always infused with atmosphere and often potent with threat.
Sanya Kantarovsky, Effacement, 2016
© Sanya Kantarovsky. Courtesy the Artist.
Kantarovsky regularly uses the term ostranenija, a word in his native Russia that means “making strange”, as a guiding principle. Encountering his art, one is aware of one’s own role in continuing that process: how, after slow-looking, they only grow in complexity. And that richness absorbs many moods and registers, from brutality and solemnity to absurdity and out-and-out humour.
Sanya Kantarovsky, As ye sow, so shall ye reap, 2020
© Sanya Kantarovsky. Courtesy the Artist and Modern Art.
He discusses the profound effect of his early access to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and particularly Picasso’s painting Girl on Ball (1905). He reflects on the influence of a huge breadth of historic painters, including Francisco de Goya, Giorgio de Chirico and Philip Guston, discusses his respect for a number of contemporary artists including Trisha Donnelly and Charline von Heyl, and talks about the significance of a number of figures from other disciplines on his work, from the poet Anna Akhmatova and the choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata to the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Sanya Kantarovsky, Boy with Cigarette, 2026
©Sanya Kantarovsky. Photo: Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist, Capitain Petzel, Modern Art and VeneKlasen.
- Sanya Kantarovsky: Basic Failure, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Loredan, Venice, 6 May–22 November
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include several museums in which Sanya Kantarovsky has shown his work, including ICA/Boston, Aspen Art Museum, and The Drawing Center in New York. On the guide to the Drawing Center, you will find an extensive feature on the Center’s current exhibition, featuring the art of Ceija Stojka (cheya stoyka), the Roma artist, activist and writer born in 1933, who was a Holocaust survivor. Stojka only began working as an artist in her late 50s, and yet produced hundreds of paintings and drawings up until her death in 2013. On Bloomberg Connects, you can hear an introduction to the show by its curator, Lynne Cooke, in which she reflects on the extraordinary life and work of the artist, who was not formally educated in art and worked in her kitchen in Vienna. You can also explore reproductions of more than 40 pieces by the artist, reflecting her distinctive expressive language in paint and ink.
