Alexander Kaletski

Alexander Kaletski is an American contemporary artist. Kaletski became famous with Cardboard paintings he created by using cardboard boxes he finds on the streets of New York. He works in the varieties of medias and styles. Kaletski makes oil paintings, collages, sculptures and videos.

In 2012 he wrote and directed and independent film "Song of Silence". He wrote the play Darkness of Light''', co-directing it with Michael Mailer off-Broadway in 2023.

Life Born in Soviet Russia, Kaletski studied acting in Moscow from 1965 to 1969 and went on to a highly successful career on stage, television, and film productions. At the same time he held underground art shows and performed songs of protest. In 1975, fleeing political prosecution and the threat of arrest by the KGB, artist and author Kaletski left the USSR. He went first to Vienna for a week, then to Rome for a month, and finally New York where he initially lived in a welfare hotel, then a room in Queens and finally an East Side studio he still uses today. When he came to America, Kaletski gave a nationwide concert tour of his Moscow underground songs, eventually appearing on the Merv Griffin television show. He taught Russian, designed fashion fabrics, illustrated books. In 1985 he published semi-autobiographical novel "Metro: A Novel of the Russian Underground" (Viking) which became an international bestseller. This year Kaletski has finished two novels – Darkness of Light and Bible Thief''.

Career Kaletski's first love was always painting. As a child he won several art competitions. At the time, in Soviet Russia only officially designated artists were allowed to legally sell their work, which was forbidden to be abstract, surreal or critical of Soviet life. Kaletski refused to paint in a style of socialist realism. But he painted anyway and went underground, where he found a thriving culture that provided him with an audience for his art and songs. In the Moscow underground Kaletski was working on the series of watercolors which he was selling to the foreigners on the black market.

When he left the USSR, Kaletski carried with him these watercolors. During that time in the Soviet Union, the works of unsanctioned or "non conformist" painters were forbidden and exhibiting as an outsider was considered a serious crime. Forgoing other necessary belongings, the artist had to pay for the release of his own pieces. When Kaletski arrived in America his watercolors were immediately exhibited in many universities around the United States, constituting some of the earliest non-conformist art to be viewed in America. His works surprised audiences as they showed unexpectedly that behind the Iron Curtain existed not only gloom and sadness, but also humor, beauty and hope.

During his first years in America, as a struggling artist without money to buy paint or a canvas, Kaletski was drawn to the thousands of cardboard boxes that litter the streets of New York City. For the artist, those boxes provided unique, if unusual, components for the creative process. Starting from commercial cardboard packaging he collaged the materials adding line and color, resulting in artwork considered provocative and most often, amusing.

Kaletski was the inaugural exhibition for Dillon Gallery when it opened in Soho in 1994. In the last seventeen years the gallery has presented numerous exhibitions of the artist's works, the most acclaimed being his Cardboard People exhibition, which opened in 1996. The show became an instant success. Since then Kaletski has regularly exhibited his paintings in museum exhibitions in the US and abroad (Austria, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, and Japan) presenting to the audience a variety of styles, techniques and concepts.

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions 2023 – "Alexander Kaletski – Box-Cutter" – Anna Zorina Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2021 – "Ricochet" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2021 – "La Vie En Blue" – De Jalon Fine Arts, Mexico City, Mexico 2019 – "Lacey Lives" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2018 – "Breaking The Wall" – B-Monster, Shanghai, China 2017 – "This Side Up" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2016 – "Musas De Carton" – De Jalon Fine Arts, Mexico City, Mexico 2016 – "Out of the Blue" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2015 – "Inspirations" – (Le) Poisson Rouge, New York City 2014 – "Red Carpet" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2014 – "Red Carpet" – Mary Boone Gallery, New York City 2013 – "Handle with Care" – Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City 2012 – "Cardboard Cafe" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 2012 – "Beach Shack" – Art Southampton, Southampton, New York 2012 – "Cardboard People Around the World" – MAD, Saint Gervais, France 2012 – "Designer's Trash" – Bonbright Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2012 – "Cardboard People Around the World" – Valette Foundation, Martigny, Switzerland 2011 – "Contemplation" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 2011 – "Cardboard People Around the World" – Looshaus, Raiffeisen Bank, Vienna, Austria 2010 – "Carton of Eden" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 2010 – "From New York to Tokyo" – Kato Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2008 – "Wet Dreams" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 2008 – "Cardboard People" – Lasandr-art Gallery, Minsk, Belarus 2007 – "Cardboard Castle" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 2007 – "Familiar Strangers" – Nelson Macker Gallery, Port Chester, Connecticut 2005 – "White Rain" – Spike Gallery, New York City 2003 – "Headlines" – Dillon Gallery, Oyster Bay, New York 2003 – "American Breakfast" – Gomez Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland 2002 – "Cardboard Museum" – Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York 2002 – "Out of the Box" – Dillon Gallery, Oyster Bay, New York 2002 – "Cardboard Box" – The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut 2000 – "Art and Wine" – The Hague, The Netherlands 2000 – "Women Only" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1999 – "Paper Heroes" – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Minsk, Belarus 1998 – "Wallpaper Heroes" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1997 – "Nude Colony" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1996 – "Cardboard People" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1996 – "Split Personality" – Gwenda Jay Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 1995 – "Dead Ancestors" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1994 – "Dreams of a Window Cleaner" – Dillon Gallery, New York City 1993 – "People in Boxes" – Z Gallery, New York City 1989 – "Rectangles" – Andre Zarre Gallery, New York City 1987 – "Angular People" – Schiller-Wapner Gallery, New York City 1977 – Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 1976 – Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 1976 – Columbia University, New York City 1975 – Saratoga Art Center, Saratoga, New York