Artist and Composer Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles November 27 1960 to Estonian immigrants. He was raised in Whittier, California and studied drawing and painting at California State University, Fullerton.

In 1982 he moved to New York, and by 1984 he became a leading figure of the East Village art movement. He developed a provocative media persona by publishing self-interviews which commented on the commodification of contemporary art. In 1988 he founded Kostabi World - a studio, gallery and office complex known for openly employing painting assistants and idea people.


In 1992 the Mitsukoshi Museum held a 100-painting retrospective of his work in Tokyo. Kostabi's work is in the New York City permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and in Holland at the Groninger Museum. Recently he painted a mural in the Palazzo dei Priori in Arezzo, Italy.

An accomplished musician, Kostabi's music has been performed in New York, Japan, Italy, and Estonia by orchestras and pianists including Rein Rannap, Kristjan Jarvi, and Kostabi himself.

Kostabi has designed album covers (Guns ‘N' Roses' Use Your Illusion, The Ramones' Adios Amigos) and numerous products including a Swatch watch, computer accessories, and limited-edition vases.

A number of television programs have profiled Kostabi including: "60 Minutes," "Eye to Eye with Connie Chung," "A Current Affair," "Nightwatch" (with Charlie Rose), "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," "West 57th," on CNN, on MTV, and numerous television programs throughout Europe and Japan. In print he has been featured in "The New York Times", "People", "Vogue", "The Face", "Playboy," "Forbes", "New York" magazine, "Domus", "Artforum", "Art in America", "ARTnews", "Flash Art", and "Tema Celeste".

Kostabi produces a weekly cable television show, "Inside Kostabi", which is viewed throughout New York City.

Kostabi lectures regularly worldwide, and he has published seven books including: Sadness Because the Video Store Was Closed, Kostabi: The Early Years, Conversations with Kostabi, and Lost and Found. A number of books have been written about Mark Kostabi including: Kostabi by Omaggio a Torino, Kostabi by Laura Cherubini, and Kostabi, The Early Years by Sir Basil Chattington.

Kostabi's works are to be found in the permanent collections of the finest museums in the world: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, just to name a few. ...

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