Turkestan avant-garde
The term avant-garde, which translates from French as ‘forefront’, refers to the modernist movements in European art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In a broad sense, the term refers to pioneering currents that break with academism and modernity. In a narrower sense, the most radical movements that turned to non-objective and non-figurative art.
Text by Munis Nur
Turkestan avant-garde or, as some specialists call it, ‘Central Asian’ avant-garde, is a relatively new term in art history. It describes a phenomenon that emerged in the visual art of Central Asia (for the most part in the area of contemporary Uzbekistan) in the late 1920s and 1930s. It has also been called the ‘eastern wing of Russian avant-garde’. After all, its founders were Russian artists who, by the will of fate, arrived in Turkestan and brought with them traditions of European art. Artists like Aleksei Isupov, Alexander Volkov, Michail Kurzin, Aleksandr Nikolaev (aka Usto Mumin), Oganes Tatevosyan, Viktor Ufimtsev, Nina Kashina, Elena Korovai, Ural Tansykbaev and others stood at the origins of Turkestan avant-garde. Today works of Russian and Turkestan avant-garde are kept in the Savitsky Museum in Karakalpakstan, nicknamed the ‘Louvre in the Desert’ because of its rich collection, particularly of Soviet art.
Turkestan avant-garde is an example of synthesis between East and West. It was the genesis of this movement that combined the experience of European and Russian avant-garde with the artistic cultures of the Middle East. For the artists who came here to grasp the East ‘from within’, Turkestan became a promised land where they experienced an atmosphere of the ancient world, Eastern life and cultures, folk art, monumental Islamic architecture and the colour and light that made their paintings unique and inimitable.
Representatives of Turkestan avant-garde can be divided into two groups: those influenced by Post-Impressionism and those who followed the ideas of Cubo-Futurism (Russian Futurism) and Suprematism. Alexander Volkov, for example, synthesised Cubist traditions with traditional forms of folk art in works like Pomegranate Teahouse, Caravan and Rest on the Road. The influence of icon painting, oriental miniatures and the arts of carving and ganch painting can be seen in Usto Mumin’s works, including The Road of Life, The Bridegroom and The Boy of the Water-carrier. Oganes Tatevosyan combined European Post-Impressionism and miniatures in his canvases (for example, Guests in the Old Town, Sale of Scones and At the House). The early works of Ural Tansykbaev – one of Uzbekistan’s first national artists – are influenced by Impressionism, Fauvism and folk paintings (Rest, Crimson Autumn and Heat of the Sun are examples). The painting The Bull by Vladimir Lysenko is a symbol of Nukus.
Usto Mumin - The Road of Life
Oganes Tatevosyan - Komsomol brigade
Vladimir Lisenko - Bull
Ural Tansykbaev - Crimson Autumn
Alexander Volkov - Caravan
In the 1930s, these vivid innovations, based on a symbiosis of Western avant-garde and local traditional arts, were severely criticised for their formalism and were halted. Creative experimentation was replaced by the dictatorship of Socialist Realism and its ideas. Nonetheless, by that time the foundations had already been laid for the formation of a national school of fine art in which Realism had the decisive weight.
Most Turkestan avant-garde is now in private collections, but the best place to see it is at the Savitsky Museum in Nukus, and there are also several pieces in the Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.
