Soviet Kyrgyz painter Gapar Aytiev 1912-1984

Soviet Kyrgyz painter Gapar Aytiev

One of the first professional Kyrgyz artists, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Aitiev followed the classical Russian tradition of landscape painting. At the same time, he is truly a national artist in the aesthetic perception of various life phenomena and deep connections with the spiritual culture of the Kirghiz people. Born September 28, 1912 in the village of Tuleiken, near the city of Osh, he became the Corresponding Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR and People’s Artist of the USSR.
In the work of Aitiev, the thematic composition does not occupy an equivalent position with the landscape, although the artist himself attached great importance to it. In his canvases, a coloristic and composition-spatial solution along with a carefully thought out motive is an important creative problem.

He entered the history of Soviet and Kyrgyz art as a great master of landscape. Whatever the artist created: the collective farm fields, clouds in the sky, the evening dawn or the sunrise – all this is filled with admiration, love for the homeland. For 25 years he headed the Union of Artists of the Republic and had a great influence on the formation and development of national fine arts. The Kyrgyz State Museum of Fine Arts has his name, and his house turned into the museum of the artist’s work.

In fact, the artist worked in all genres, but he is a landscape painter by vocation. His picture “Evening in the mountains” depicting flocks of sheep with a shepherd and a combine harvester – filled with a sense of truth and naturalness, and organically enter the landscape background. An example of a genre landscape is the picturesque canvases “On the Outskirts of the Village” and “Outskirts of the State Farm.”

Soviet Kyrgyz painter Gapar Aytiev

In the second half of the 60s of the last century Aytiev drew a series of landscapes “The Land of Kirghiz”. It includes a number of first-class compositions and puts the painter in a row of the largest Soviet landscape painters. The mountains of Aitiev often emphasize the idea that the Earth is a planet of people, and the social meaning of the compositions is in their deep humanity. The artist introduces the viewer into the world of eternal beauty. Joy or sadness, a sunny day or a misty morning, a plowed furrow or a field where ripe wheat ripens, shepherds on jailoo, girls in a cotton field or running athletes… Everything has involvement in the vast world of this very planet of people, from where we all come from …

Aytiev – Hero of Socialist Labor, People’s Artist of the USSR. In 1938 he graduated from the Moscow art-technical school in memory of 1905, studied under N. P. Krymov. For a series of paintings “The Land of Kirghiz” in 1966 he received the State Prize of the Kirghiz SSR. Awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, two Orders of the Badge of Honor and medals of the USSR.