Kazarian, EduardEduard Kazarian was born in 1964 in Almaty. Now known as one of Kazakhstan's most prominent sculptors, Kazarian got his start in monumental art, majoring in the specialty at art school and completing a large mosaic as his thesis project.
Kazarian first worked with monumental sculpture and mosaics while interning at a studio that belonged to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Roads, a workshop specifically dedicated to producing the country’s fanciful bus stop shelters. The artist has lamented that most of the bus stops he personally designed have not survived to the present day. For one bus shelter near the corner of Tashkentskaya and Máté Zalka in Almaty, Kazarian designed a two-story bus stop "like a castle," with a staircase leading to a second floor with stained glass windows. The idea was that regional buses only arrive every half an hour, and commuters would have time to ascend the staircase and look out for when their bus was pulling up. Such was the playfullness and whimsy that Kazarian’s art would become famous for. |