Javad MirJavadov

Giz Galasi Gallery, Baku

Moscow, A. A. Fadeev Central House of Artists Exhibition Hall, Javad MirJavadov, 1987, illustrated in colour
Baku, National Museum of Art, Javad, 2012

Javad MirJavadov is an outstanding Azeribaijani artist of the second half of the twentieth century. The key details of this maestro can be summarised by a few dates: 1987, when solo exhibitions were held in Baku and Moscow in the Central House of Artists; 1988, when he was honoured for his services to Azerbaijani Art, and 1992, the year in which a personal retrospective was held in the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.
Having graduated from the Baku Art School in 1949, MirJavadov spent a number of years in Leningrad, where he managed to secure a position at the State Hermitage Museum as a manual labourer and gain access to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings which at that time left the storerooms only to be shown to Soviet cultural officials as examples of a degenerate bourgeois ideology. 

This first-hand experience of being able to freely study, copy and work his way through originals by El Greco, Rembrandt and most of all the forbidden pieces by Cézanne and Van Gogh, was a genuine education for MirJavadov. Of similar significance in his formation as an artist was MirJavadov's acquaintance with the collection at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Here he handled traditional African, Oceanic, Indonesian and Middle Eastern folk art. The artist became especially interested in tribal art for its connections to Shamanistic rituals.

This all made an impact on not only the young MirJavadov’s painting style, but also on his personal and artistic position as categorically opposed to Socialist Realism, the only acceptable stylistic direction for Soviet art in this period.

On returning to his homeland in the mid-1950s, the artist was introduced to the Neolithic cave drawings that had been discovered in the mountainous area of Gobustan, not far from Baku on the shores of the Caspian Sea. MirJavadov was one of the first Azeri artists to be shown the site, which today is known throughout the world as a monument to primitive culture. The artist was astounded and often returned with friends. The attraction of Gobustan lay not only in the cave drawings, but also in the powerful spirit that emanated from the caves, which appeared to have been hewn by furious giants.
"In my work I tried to express the ambiance of the caves, the volcanoes, the outlines of the mountains, their monumental forms and dynamics…I was happy!", the artist later reminisced.

Azerbaijani medieval miniatures were another element of the national culture that played a significant role on the formation of Javad MirJavadov’s creativity . At a later date, in the mid-1980s, the artist created a large series of paintings, Improvisations on the Theme of Eastern Miniatures. This important thread of national culture can be read in the painting Mafiozi (1984) in particular, executed in this very period and close to the imagery to the aforementioned cycle. The individual language of the master in this, his period of creative maturity, is characterised by a number of elements: a canvas densely packed with pictorial elements; a balanced combination of linearity and three-dimensionality; the application of bright, iridescent and contrasting colours that create the effect of stained glass together with schematic, generalised and geometric forms.

The devils (divs), unrestrained women and grotesque masks which wander in and out of the present work are, according to the artist, symbols of the vices of modern society: fornication, greed, hypocrisy. Humanity is depicted as ill and sinful, endowed with a brute strength that it squanders on vapid entertainment and the satisfaction of base needs.
Allegory reinforced by an expressive manner of presentation, is the artist’s hallmark. Through the language of art, he sought to re-create a painting of the modern world that he saw and felt, with an almost physically palpable system of images. With the help of recognisable mythological characters that interacted with anthropomorphic creatures, more closely resembling robots than real people, MirJavadov attempted to show the darkness and negativity of the guiding principles of the 'powerful few' of the time, both obviated and concealed. Mafiozi is one of the few paintings in which the artist pointely, via the title, tries to describe the real message of the overwhelming majority of his work.
Here there are many symbols and hidden signs that hint at an unfamiliar subtext we are yet to understand. In addition many elements are borrowed by the artist from Azeri carpets and indicate at deep connections between the artist and folk traditions.The East rarely operates solely with concrete words. Eastern literature and eastern art is based on metaphors, symbols and allegories. Besides the surface meaning, something hidden always presents itself as a second, third or tenth turn. And this is perceived by an enlightened and educated addressee, on whom the degree of comprehension depends.
In the notes accompanying the exhibition that took place after the artist’s death in the Museum of Oriental Art, MirJavadov was named the founder of the modern school of painting in Azerbaijan. Whether or not this is the case,the personality of MirJavadov, his attitude towards art and life had a colossal impact on the younger generation of Azerbaijani artists, in particular the generation of the 1970s. This fact certainly makes Javad MirJavadov one of the key figures in the formation of the identity of the modern school of painting in Azerbaijan. He was not simply an artist; while he left behind him brilliant examples of painting, drawing and sculpture, he was also an erstwhile philosopher and prophet whose art inspired to do better by revealing the sins of modern society.

Catalogue note written by Dilara Vagabova, PhD, art critic and curator.