Sanya Kantarovsky
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Biography
Born 1982 in Moscow, Russia
Lives and works in New York, NY
Sanya Kantarovsky works across mediums, including sculpture, animation and curation, with painting remaining at the center of his practice. Teeming with wry humor and unearthly narratives, Kantarovsky’s paintings propose scenarios of turmoil and investigate liminal spaces, physical proximities, affect, and cruelty. His sometimes delicate and often macabre subjects grapple with the confines of their bodies, interacting with one another in a painterly satire of status anxiety and existential crises.
In 2026 Kantarovsky will have a solo show at Palazzo Loredan, Venice. The artist has recently been the subject of institutional solo shows at Aspen Art Museum, Kunsthalle Basel, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. His works have been presented in institutions such as Pinault Collection, Paris; Couvent des Jacobins, Rennes; BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome; Kunsthalle Zurich; Drawing Center, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; ICA Boston; Baltic Triennial 13, Vilnius; Jewish Museum, New York; and Sculpture Center, New York.
Kantarovsky’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Pinault Collection, Paris; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Tate, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others.
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Sanya Kantarovsky is quintessentially a painter – someone who lives and breathes the materials, procedures, and heritage of the art. He’s someone who, according to the curator Elena Filipovic, “believes more in the utter necessity of painting than nearly anyone I’ve ever met.”
– Barry Schwabsky
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Sanya Kantarovsky
A Solid House, 2022HD video, 12:21 min
Edition of 5 + 2 AP -
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Works
Sanya Kantarovsky
Chicken Eyes, 2020Watercolor and ink on Arches paperSigned and dated versoPaper dimensions:
37.5 x 28.6 cm / 14.8 x 11.3 inches
Framed dimensions:
42.1 x 32.9 cm / 16.6 x 12.9 inches
B-SKANTAROVSKY.-20-0005ExhibitionsExternal ExhibitionsNewsPressPublicationsExhibition video
Sanya Kantarovsky, Center, Capitain Petzel, 2022



