AYKHAN KHADZHIEV - CREATOR OF THE CANONICAL PORTRAIT OF MAKHTUMKULI

Aykhan Khadzhiev was born in 1924 in the picturesque village of Bagir. He hardly remembered his father, who passed away early, but his uncle, who was engaged in teaching and translations from the Turkmen language into Russian, and his mother, who was a skilled embroiderer, paid attention to the boy's passion for drawing in childhood and developed his talent in every possible way. ...

The young lover of painting and his brother entered the boarding school at the Art College, but in different departments: Ayhan - for art, brother - for music. On Saturdays and Sundays, the children came home to help their mother with the housework. At the age of 13, one of Khadzhiev's works "Rest in a Cotton Field" took second place in the All-Union competition of children's drawings. This first great success gave the young man creative strength and increased the desire to improve his technique.

After studying at the boarding school, Khadzhiev entered the Art College, after which he began to work as an artist at the Opera and Ballet Theater named after Makhtumkuli.

At the end of 1944, Aykhan continued his education at the Moscow Art Institute named after Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, which was Khadzhiev's favorite painter. A student from Turkmenistan was deeply impressed by the rich color of the historical paintings of the great painter.

In 1947, a significant event took place in the artist's life: a creative competition was announced in Ashgabat to create a portrait of Makhtumkuli. One of its participants was a third-year student of the Surikov Institute, who had long dreamed of capturing the image of the great Turkmen poet on canvas.

At the very beginning of his work, Aykhan visited the ancestral village of Makhtumkuli, where he talked a lot with representatives of his family, looking for the optimal type. The artist spent a lot of time trying to find out if there was any oral evidence of the poet's appearance, as well as his habits. Writers Berdy Kerbabaev, Beki Seytakov, Myati Kosayev also advised the painter in the work on the image.

The result of painstaking work was the famous portrait depicting the poet sitting at a table in the process of creating another literary masterpiece. The work won first place in the competition, but much more important for Aykhan was that it was accepted by the poet's relatives, who specially came to express their gratitude to the artist.

After the competition, the portrait was donated to the Turkmen State Museum of Fine Arts. When an earthquake struck in October 1948, the main hall of the art gallery suffered minor damage. So the frame of the portrait of Makhtumkuli cracked, but the canvas remained unharmed.

Acquaintance with the biography of the great poet gave birth to new images. This is how the work “Makhtumkuli the Jeweler” appeared, where apprentices sit in the jeweler's workshop, as if spellbound, to whom Makhtumkuli may be reading his new creation.

Among the works of Aykhan Khadzhiev there is also "The Age-old Dream Come True", dedicated to the builders of the Karakum Canal. On it, the yashuli, drawing the water that has come into the desert in the palm of his hand, watches how the life-giving moisture so dear to every Turkmen flows down between his fingers.

In 1967, Khadzhiev was awarded the State Prize named after Makhtumkuli for his work.

Until the end of his life, the painter taught the students of the Department of Architecture of the Turkmen State Polytechnic Institute the discipline "drawing and painting". Working in this position, he became the first professor of art history in the history of Turkmenistan.

Roman Teplyakov

Aykhan Khadzhiev - creator of the canonical portrait of Makhtumkuli (turkmenistan.gov.tm)