Javad MirJavadov

Sale: Bruun Rasmussen Auctions, Denmark, Russian Painting and Antiques, 21 November 2008, Lot 951
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Javad MirJavadov is an Azerbaijani artist whose creative output directly reflects his heritage and education in Azerbaijan and the Soviet Union.  He was born in Baku in 1923 and educated at the Azim Azimzade State Art School in the same city from 1941 to 1949 before moving immediately to St Petersburg where he informally continued his education. 

During his time in St Petersburg MirJavadov managed to install himself in an extremely favourable position that allowed him access to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection of paintings held in the storerooms of the State Hermitage Museum.  He was one of the only young artists able to study works by artists such as Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh which were condemned as examples of a degenerate bourgeois ideology and kept from wider view.  The other important influence on his work was his exposure to the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography where he encountered African, Indonesian, Oceanic and Middle Eastern folk and tribal art.  These styles and movements would continue to shape his work for the rest of his life.

Following his time in St Petersburg MirJavadov established himself in Buzovni, a seaside village 30km from Baku, where he received like-minded artists, poets and other bohemian individuals who shared his dissatisfaction with Soviet Realism and the censorship artistic creativity.  His overwhelming charisma made him the natural centre of attention. At Buzovni MirJavadov started a new artistic movement now largely known as the Absheron School of Colourists.  Other members included his younger brother Tofik Javadov, Rasim Babayev and other prominent Azerbaijani painters. Togrul Narimanbekov was also among the younger followers of the new aesthetic.

MirJavadov rebelled against Soviet Realism both in lifestyle and artistic practice. The artist and his companions returned to the roots and traditions of the Absheron Peninsula by exploring the ancient villages, caves and mud volcanoes of the region on foot.  MirJavadov favoured an extremely bright, unnatural and contrasting colour palette in his works, as is the case in Rendezvous.  In the present work one can see bright red, pink, green, blue, yellow, orange and black all arranged side by side and chosen for powerful effect.  Colour was combined with bold brushstrokes, thick impasto and mixing paint with sand and other materials in order to create very expressive and energetic works with three dimensional canvas surfaces.

The sometimes grotesque figures that appear in MirJavadov’s works are both a social critique of contemporary society and tribute to primal human relationships and traditional values. In fact, this return to ancient traditions was another form of rebellion against the Soviet ideology, which often based its propaganda on progress and industrialisation.

‘I alter the reality of my sensations by means of new aesthetics. Each of my paintings is not the reflection of the world- it is the world itself.’ Javad MirJavadov, 'My Declaration', in Chingiz Farzaliyev, (ed.), Javad, 2012, p.7