Aibek Begalin was born in 1963 in Astana, Kazakhstan. In 1989 he graduated from V. Surikov Moscow State Academy Art Institute with a Master of Fine Arts. Now he lives and works in Los-Angeles, California, USA. He has had exhibitions in Astana, Moscow, Cairo (Egypt), Brussels (Belgium), Worpswede (Germany), and Zhangzhou (China). In 2001 he had made a portrait for Pope John Paul II. In 2014 he had made a portrait of Prince Rainier III for Prince of Monaco Albert II. His paintings were exhibited at the European Parliament in Brussels in 2015. Aibek Begalin received the Order of Honor of the Republic of Kazakhstan. He is a member of the Kazakhstan Academy of Arts and was awarded a diploma of the Russian Academy of Arts. He is an honorary professor of the East International College of Chinа. Aibek Begalin created several cycles of paintings: "Apocalypse" (30 finely detailed paintings, 7 of these paintings are presented in the Moscow Museum "Ark of the New Testament"), "Time" and "My Kazakhstan". He illustrated the novel "The Scaffold" by Ch. Aitmatov and the stories "Early Cranes", "Spotted Dog Running on Seashore" (edited by "Detlit", Moscow). He was awarded the diploma of the Russian Academy of Arts for illustrations to the novel "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years". 34 of his paintings were included in the Encyclopedia "Avanta +" ("Society, Part 2", a multimedia application, Moscow, 2004). Paintings of Aibek Begalin are featured on DVDs of rock bands Voskreseniye and Mashina Vremeni; in 2005 a DVD trilogy by Voskreseniye received the Golden Disc Award in the category "Best Multimedia Project of Russia". Through the use of fantastic realism and neomodernism, the artist expresses a romantic perception of the world. Aibek Begalin’s paintings are presented in the museums (A. Kasteev Art Museum in Almaty, Karaganda Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Museum "Ark of the New Testament", Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art), as well as in private collections in Vatican, Japan, USA, Germany, France, Kazakhstan, Israel, England, Italy, Russia, Cuba, Monaco and others. more