Talented master of pencil, full member of the UNESCO’s International Art Academy, goodwill ambassador, prominent man of art, professor Arif Aziz is one of the most famous, well-known persons of the modern Azerbaijan art. He travelled a rich and interesting creative career.
Arif Mohubali oglu Azizov (Arif Aziz) was born on 3 January 1943 in Baku. His early childhood coincided with hard war period and difficult post-war years full of hardship. However, he received education, dreaming about being an artist. Warm colours of native land, blue water of babbling Caspian Sea, cold breath of quick-tempered Khazry (wind blowing from the Caspian Sea), village houses with domed roof, figs and grapes of sandy Baku gardens, rich boons… were in front of his eyes since his childhood, touching him and engraving into his memory. Maybe these early impressions, romantic feelings later made the artist to repeatedly transfer Absheron land, Baku views to the canvas in his “Absheron school” tableau with artistic and stylistic tendency. In his book “Temple of our culture and art” the prominent man of art, Doctor of Philology, professor Timuchin Afandiyev describes the national features of the artist’s creations as follows: “Decorativeness, inclination to national colour and other features are clearly seen in the creative work of Arif Aziz. His themes mainly reflect native Azerbaijan, Absheron land and the Caspian Sea.”
After graduation from the secondary school Arif Aziz studied in art school of Azim Azimzadeh in 1960-1965. After graduation he went to Moscow to continue his art education and enrolled to Graphic design faculty of Moscow State Industrial Art University. Once this university was known by name of count Stroganov. The name “Stroganov school” is known even today and, in fact, has become a well-known calling card of this prestigious school.
The young artist studied in Moscow in 1966-1971 and returned to Baku after graduation, and in 1971 he started teaching art at the Azerbaijan State Art Institute of M.A.Aliyev (present Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Art). Further activity of the talented artist combined the artistic creativity and pedagogical work. During these years he was productive as an artist, at the same time teaching young artists speciality subjects as a well-prepared tutor. Today Arif Aziz is one of the prestigious, experienced teachers and the member of scientific board at the university where he has been working for more than 40 years. Professor Arif Aziz is a head of painting and decorative applied art faculty of the University.
Arif Aziz worked as a teacher in Beykent University (Turkey) in 2004-2008. The subsequent teaching activity of the artist was again linked to the Azerbaijan State University of Art and Culture. The experienced teacher and artist diligently teaches his students the secrets of art and works hard to turn them into real artisans. Today, number of Arif Aziz’s students are known as talented artists. They are known not only in Azerbaijan, but also overseas.
Each artist has stages in his/her career and reasons characterizing these stages. Naturally, this feature did not pass by Arif Aziz’s creative work. The artist entered the world of creation with graphics, and then created many-coloured compositions in easel painting. Portrait genre can also be included in the early period of the artist’s work. In later periods the portraits were substituted with symbolic images, which indicate the evolution of imagination of the creative artist and his desire to deepen his style in art.
The creative work of Arif Aziz is rich and branched. He painted numerous posters, ex-libris, logos, design sketches, as well as illustrations for children’s books during the graphic period in the early stage of his work. The artist diligently works in the field of both creative and industrial graphics. Advertisement posters created by Arif Aziz during that period are noteworthy. These posters served not only as propaganda, but were also distinguished with their interesting composition and colour solution. In 60-70s of the 20th century “photo-realism” mood was dominating the poster art, which hindered the application of creative opportunities of the poster in full. During that period Arif Aziz already had an innovative manner of painting and enhanced poster genre even more by introducing decorativeness. While analysing the posters of the artist, the Doctor of Arts, Professor Nuraddin Habibov noted that the artist moved away from narrative painting widely used in poster genre by working in modern manner and based on figurative imagination and symbolic components.
When speaking about the work of the artist in the field graphic we cannot but to mention his “Heroes of labour of Baku” album consisting of 40 black and white portraits. Arif Aziz was an artist who knew well the language of colours and, at the same time, he could perfectly work with black colours on white paper, create colour, rhythm and volumetric effect with black drafting ink. In his black and white compositions he skilfully reflects inner world of a person, his/her emotions and expressiveness of the structure. Arif Aziz also created the series of images of men of art. The graphic portraits of Gara Garayev, Fikrat Amirov, Suleyman Rustam, maestro Niyazi and others performed in a manner of etching catch the eye with richness of images and live impact.
The early period of Arif Aziz’s activity is also characterized with theatre decoration art. In 1974-1975 the well-known theatre director, honoured actor of the USSR Andrey Goncharov was staging a tragicomedy by Nikolay Erdman “Suicider” in Moscow. The play was supposed to be presented in a completely new form both in style and in spirit, idea and meaning. Goncharov, who sensed the innovative spirit of Arif Aziz even during those years, invited him to work on a setting for this tragicomedy. The artist accepted this invitation, however there was an interesting dialogue between them. Arif Aziz reminded the director that he was specialised in advertisement settings and design and not in theatre painting. The director gave an interesting answer to this:
– I saw your design setting works and liked them very much. We are trying to avoid traditional stereotypes in order to bring a new air to the scenic design. Therefore we turned to interesting idea and aesthetic means and visual effects instead of traditional and standard settings. So we have decided to assign the setting of the play to you.
Arif Aziz prepared the setting of the tragicomedy and the play was, in fact, successful. This play was a big cultural event in the theatre circle of Moscow of that period.
Easel painting plays an important role in the works of Arif Aziz. Though graphics, as well as theatre decoration art was the main part of the early stage of the artist’s activity, he was mainly inclined to easel painting in the following years. His colourful and rich palette, extensive creative imagination, mature art style was more prominent in painting.
Arif Aziz’s palette is considered rich and colourful because it was fed from favourite colours of native land. National colour was, probably, the main condition for this palette to look colourful, live and convincing. However, the artist was not satisfied with taking these colours from the nature, he added mysterious harmony, lyrical miracle to each of these colours. As a result, the colours in the tableau of the artist speak from themselves and fully express their philosophical and romantic meaning.
The themes of Arif Aziz’s painting world is wide and colourful. But as we noted before, most of his tableau have an aura of the native Absheron land. There is an interesting trend, school in modern Azerbaijan art called “Absheron school”. This school can be noticed in the creative work of many popular artists. Absheron theme is widely represented in Arif Aziz’s themes. When we familiarise ourselves with his paintings, we can feel the sincerity, love and creative passion of the artist stemming from his fascination with Absheron. Probably these feelings were the reason why the artist succeeded in convincing people of simplicity of his tableau, showing the reality of views and feelings expressed in the paintings.
Tendency to decorativeness is strong in Arif Aziz’s art. This decorativeness can be seen in the structure of composition, everyday components, in mood filled with national character and in lively, bright colours of native land. The artist masterfully uses various colour shades to present his feelings to people. National spirit dominates in paintings like “Sacred place”, “Gala village”, “Gobustan”, “Icherisheher” (Old city), in number of still life, landscape and thematic works. Bright colours of native land used in these paintings please the eye and soul of people.
The art has specific features, attributes of decorativeness. As in traditional Oriental art, the artist avoids shade and light effect in most of his compositions. Instead he uses contrasted colours, or alternates various shades of the same colour creating optical richness of content and the effect of colourfulness. Decorativeness is mostly used in fairy tales, legends, folklore, but Arif Aziz rarely used these themes preferring to describe the native land. In his paintings, the decorativeness is reflected in expression of colours and traditional plot.
One of the main features of Arif Aziz’s world of colours is his approach to white colours, white strokes. These white strokes indicates the stage of master ship in his creations. Unmatched, and probably mysterious character of this feature highlights his unique art world. There are interesting views in the number of artist’s paintings created by using white stroke. These white strokes, big and small white smears are attributes of Arif Aziz’s creative work. Genuine signature of the artist is reflected more prominently in this whiteness.
Arif Aziz uses various techniques of white strokes. Most of the times these white strokes completely cover the painting as a white clew; various outlines of individual household items, utensils, pots, jugs, fruit known to the onlookers emerge from behind of this whiteness. Researchers analysing the work of the painter, including well-known journalist and public servant Galina Mikeladze noted this peculiarity.
Arif Aziz created an artistic form in national art by skilfully using these white strokes. Some fine art experts note “these white strokes are his business card”. This is the case. White strokes are so peculiar for creative work of Arif Aziz that he is sometimes presented as Arif Aziz Bayaz (White).
Arif Aziz’s paintings are well known even outside of our republic. His exhibitions were held in number of countries of the world. Arif Aziz’s paintings were repeatedly displayed in CIS countries, Turkey, India, Bulgaria, and Senegal and in many other countries. Although Arif Aziz mainly praises the native Azerbaijan land, he likes to revive and reflect the national originality of various nations with colours. As such, his “Senegal paintings” series is very characteristics. These playful, expressive paintings that reflect the “play” of colours and sometimes resemble suprematist art, the hot colours of Africa create effective harmony and as if reflect the rhythmic sounds of local music.
Arif Aziz achieved number of artistic triumphs until today. He is a standing member of “New Era” International Art Academy established by UNESCO and located in Dubrovnik (Croatia). This honourable title is a clear evidence of recognition of the artist and appreciation of his works in number of countries in the world. Arif Aziz is a president of Baku branch of this prestigious organisation.
Creations of Arif Aziz’s were noted by researchers, journalists and have repeatedly become a subject of studies. Besides the people noted above, deputy of AR Milli Majlis, academician Ziyad Samadzadeh, well known dramatic theorist and scientist, doctor of art criticism, professor Ilham Rahimli, poet Zulfugar Shahsevanly and others spoke about various aspects of Arif Aziz’s creative work.
Regular feature stories, scientific publicistic articles about the rich palette of the artist were published on the pages of periodicals. His artistic style was analysed in major scientific and research works and reflected in books and text-books.
In the beginning of 2003, the book “Light of a person and art” reflecting the life and creative work and dedicated to the 60th anniversary of Arif Aziz was published. The book contains numerous feature stories and articles published in Azerbaijan, English and Russian languages in periodicals. These stories written by well-known scientists and men of art, journalists, colleague teachers, students of the artist presented perfect, rich, versatile view of the rich creative world of the artist. The book also contained examples of his works, interesting photos reflecting various moments of his life. The book was met with interest and nice words, thoughts were said, various articles characterising the book were published in press.
Today Arif Aziz is living the mature moments of creative life. As decades before, the artist continues his favourite creative works and paints with pleasure and youthful enthusiasm. As before, Arif Aziz is still surrounded by numerous pupils and students. The person, who lived most of his life in art, cannot live without it. These words can be attributed to Arif muallim (master). The artist enriches his rich creative path full of grandiose events even more when he transfers his favourite strokes to canvas every day.
Ayan Aziz Mammadova
Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts
Painting faculty, PhD
