The A. Kasteev State Museum of Art of the Republic of Kazakhstan was established in 1976 in accordance with the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR No. 265 dated June 10, 1976 on the basis of the collection of the T.G. Shevchenko Kazakh State Art Gallery (established in 1935) and the Republican Museum of Applied Arts (established in 1970).
The museum was opened to visitors on September 16, 1976. In January 1984, the museum was named after the National Artist of the Kazakh SSR A. Kasteev (1904-1973). In January 2005, a monument to Abylkhan Kasteev was unveiled, under the direct supervision and financial support of the Akimat of Almaty.
Currently, the A. Kasteev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan is the largest art museum in the Republic of Kazakhstan, a world-famous scientific research and cultural and educational center in the field of fine arts.
The main mission of the Museum is collecting, storing, conducting research on attribution, restoration, history, theory of fine art and promotion of works of Kazakh and foreign art.
The main part of the collection represents the fine and decorative arts of Kazakhstan.
The collection also includes sections of Western European, Russian, Oriental and Soviet art.
In 2025, the State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan named after A. Kasteev will celebrate 90 years since its foundation.
- Number of exhibits
The number of exhibits of the Museum's main fund for January 2024 is 26,124 items.
- Name of the halls, description of the halls
The permanent exhibition of the museum introduces the best works from the museum collection. It includes 13 thematic sections, including: DPI of Kazakhstan (2 halls), A. Kasteev Memorial Hall, art of Kazakhstan 1930-1990 (painting, sculpture) in 3 halls, art of Independent Kazakhstan (2 galleries), the twentieth century and modernity (modern foreign art), Russian art, art of Western Europe, art of the East, foreign art of the twentieth century.
- The number of visitors over the years of the museum's existence
The average number of visitors per year ranges from 90 thousand to 200 thousand. In 2023, 203,597 people visited the museum.
- The history of the museum's painting
One of the main directions in the museum's activities has been and remains the creation of a fundamental collection of Kazakh fine art. The best works of artists of Kazakhstan from pre-revolutionary, Soviet times and the period of Independence are collected.
The art school of Kazakhstan is less than 100 years old. In a short historical period, an important path of development was created by absorbing the ideological and aesthetic principles of traditional culture and mastering the world's artistic experience. Each stage of this forward movement is distinguished by special stylistic and meaningful searches presented in the chronological sections of the exposition. History and modernity, relationships in the progressive movement into the future are the main concept of the creativity of Kazakhstani masters.
The collection of fine arts of Kazakhstan makes up a significant part of the collection of all funds of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. Kasteev. These are more than 10 thousand exhibits, which can be used to trace the history of the formation and development of the art of the republic. The art school of Kazakhstan is represented by the names of masters of different generations who have creative individuality and uniqueness.
The pre-revolutionary period in the visual arts of Kazakhstan is represented by paintings by N. G. Khludov (1850-1935), an artist who, having arrived in Kazakhstan at the end of the XIX century, made a significant contribution to the process of assimilation of the European visual tradition in Central Asia. N. Khludov opened the first in Vernom (now Almaty) In the republic, an art studio was opened in 1921, where such subsequently famous masters as A. Kasteev, A. Bortnikov, A. Martova, S. Chuikov and others received initial training. To the genre works of N. Khludov is characterized by documentary accuracy in fixing the ethnic and psychological characteristics of his characters. The exhibition also presents small-format landscape works by the artist, which he created during his numerous trips around Kazakhstan.
Since the mid-1950s, the period of creation of a truly national school of painting, graphics and sculpture has begun in Kazakhstan. This was facilitated by the approach of the political "thaw" of the 1960s, as well as the entry into the artistic arena of a whole galaxy of young professional masters. Representatives of a new generation of Kazakh artists, such as K., full of enthusiasm and creative ideas, return to the republic after studying at the central universities of the country. Telzhanov, S. Mambeev, A. Galimbayeva, K. Shayakhmetov, M. Kenbaev, G. Ismailova. Their works are distinguished by high professionalism, vivid emotionality and picturesque freedom in conveying themes and plots taken from national history and folklore. From this period on, the national identity of the Kazakh art school will be determined, to a large extent, by the ability of artists to express the spiritual kinship of a modern person with the age-old traditions of their people. The true heyday of painting in the 50s is associated with their names.
Since the mid–1960s, paintings, graphic, and sculptural works began to appear at republican art exhibitions in Kazakhstan, significantly differing in plastic and figurative solutions from the already familiar works in the style of classical realism and often carrying the pathos of socialist content.
It was a new generation of artists who saw the world in a different way and set themselves fundamentally different creative tasks. The canvas became a kind of artistic manifesto of a group of rebel artistsSalihitdin Aitbayeva's "Happiness",exhibited at the Republican Youth Exhibition in 1966. Later, already in the 70s, the painting was repeatedly exhibited in All-Union youth expositions, representing the next stage in the development of the Kazakh art school. In this work, for the first time, the methods of national figurative and plastic depiction were directly reflected: flatness, operation of large shapes, conciseness of color and pattern, figurative symbolism. The 60s brought new ideas, a new look at the national heritage itself. The Sixties are a bright generation, and its glory was S. Aitbayev, Sh. Sariev, T. Togusbayev, M. Kisamedinov, B. Pak, I. Isabaev, T. Dosmagambetov, E. Mergenov, A. Sydykhanov, B. Tabiev and others. In their work, the orientation towards a conventionally metaphorical style is combined with a variety of ornamental and color-plastic motifs. The development of art in the 70s and 80s is reflected in the collection by the works of K. Duisenbaev, A. Akanaev, K. Mullashev, D. Aliyev, E. Tulepbaev, who declared themselves an alternative to the official orientation of socialist realism, opening the way to the ideas of the post-Soviet "avant-garde".
The 90s – the time when Kazakh art reaches new levels of knowledge of the world, man, and the universe. Recent acquisitions make it possible to reflect the manifestations of new features of the national school in the exhibition. New trends in art turn out to be directly related to the ancient spiritual tradition, the native national worldview. The works of A. Yesenbayeva, B. Bapisheva, G. Madanova, A. Esdauletova, K. Khairullina, and others most vividly reflect the trends of the present time.
The section of the exhibition "Modern Art of Kazakhstan" presents the most characteristic trends in the development of national painting and sculpture in the 1990s and early 21st century. This historical period of time was associated with the formation of a new independent state – the Republic of Kazakhstan. Complex and ambiguous processes in the political, economic and cultural spheres unfolded in the context of rethinking the meaning of genuine and imaginary values, searching for the spiritual foundations of a new world order.
Artists and sculptors of Kazakhstan in the 1990s and the last decade put forward a wide range of individual views and concepts concerning the problems of creativity, the role and content of the art of the new century.
One of the most significant tasks of this time was the formation of a special figurative language capable of adequately reflecting the inner spiritual tension of a person in the face of global phenomena accompanying the disintegration of the ideological utopia of the twentieth century. Freedom of expression and the emancipation of the energy of previously hidden creative ideas have been realized in an extraordinary variety of stylistic and figurative interpretations. Collages by Galim Madanov and Aivar Taziev, "sharp" in the design and execution of the installation Tryakina-Bukharova, expressive in silhouette and tragic in content sculptures by Erkin Mergenov represent the emancipation of powerful epic forces in their breadth and depth, capable of giving significant semantic and symbolic content to works of various texture and form.
