Genia Chef (born in Kazakhstan, lives and works in Berlin) is an internationally acclaimed artist renowned for his radical and visceral interpretation of the myth of Don Quixote, a figure that has accompanied him since his youth and played a decisive role in his choice to become an artist. Founder of Post-Historicismus, an artistic movement that merges painterly tradition with a contemporary visual language, Chef developed this approach during his years in Cadaqués on the Costa Brava.

His work is characterized by monumental formats that dissolve the boundaries between painting and graphic art, creating a true topography of the soul. Drawing on techniques of the Old Masters, he thins oil paint with liquid amber and confronts it with experimental mixtures—wine, olive oil, and pigments drawn from the Spanish earth—in an almost alchemical process that approaches cooking as a creative act. The resulting surfaces possess a strong physical presence, traversed by networks of lines and flowing substances that evoke both the arid landscape of La Mancha and the capillaries of the human body and mind.

Chef combines drawing with feathers, ink, visible charcoal underdrawings, and energetic graphic gestures, integrating chance as an essential element of his practice. During the pandemic, he developed the concept of “aesthetic recycling,” producing hundreds of drawings from pharmaceutical packaging treated with coffee or tea. These works resemble aged parchments and ancient manuscripts, extending his ongoing engagement with literary memory.

Educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he received the Golden Füger Prize, Genia Chef has exhibited extensively in museums and biennials worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, the State Russian Museum, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and numerous institutions across Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Asia. His work invites viewers to rediscover Don Quixote as an intense, physical, and profoundly contemporary visual experience.