Kalmykov Sergey is a painter, graphic artist, illustrator, decorator, and writer.

He was born in Samarkand and attended there an art school, then he studied in St. Petersburg in the studios of M.V. Dobuzhinsky and K.S. Petrov-Vodkin. After the revolution in 1917, Sergey Kalmykov went to Orenburg, where he participated in the design of revolutionary holidays and public buildings, lectured on the history of art, and took part in art exhibitions. In 1935 he came to Kazakhstan by invitation to work in the newly established musical theatre of Alma-Ata (now the Abay Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre), where he worked for many years.

Talking about himself in the third person, he said it best about his work: “Sergey Kalmykov is an artist, philosopher, artist-inventor, fiction writer, author of numerous folios, his diaries, biographies, unsent letters, dedications, aphorisms, sarcasm, and lyrics. Restless, striving, and angry, always alone in his quest. He seeks himself in nature, in the mathematical clutches of points, lines, and nebulae. In astronomical star fantasies, he seeks justification for his fantasies…Kalmykov’s technique is line and colour in motion, in vibration; form – in incompleteness; colours – in strict combinations; composition – in abstruse variants”. The work Landscape in the museum collection is one of the few works of the artist, made under the influence of nature.