At the end of October – beginning of November, 2001 the Republican Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan held the exhibition of Tura Shomirzaev. At first it plunged visitors into shock, which soon was changed by the feeling of sudden, may be rough, power of somebody’s difficult fortune wishing to give flesh and blood to the similar characters for ever. The Exhibition caused permanent and strong interest. It reminded the situation when among the crowd of successful people you suddenly notice somebody’s tormented body and understand: this is real, this is – life!
Brightly manifested wish to say own word about earth and human was spoken out so persistently that fully bended to it. It is noticeable that, with all difficulties in artistry, the artist is not a self-taught person who makes the first steps in cognition. But he is going right through. Some of the famous artists marked that discoveries in art belong to amateur artists but not to sophisticated ones, for they don’t think about what is possible and what is impossible trying to solve it themselves and do it in such way that seems impossible to professionals. The principal distinguishing feature that catches our attention – seeming absence of facility in brush is caused not by the limit of colors and experience; this feature points out hard overcoming of the impossible, so typical for his creativity.
He searches for the image of grace and finds it in the people of his native land: “Hard Brushwood”, “Shepherd-bakhshi”, “The People of the village”, “The Herdsman”, “The Magic Mirror”, “The Wedding”, “The man is working”, “The Man and Birds”, “On the Bank of the River”, “Earth and Sky”, “The Women with Jugs”, “The Master of Mountains”, “Chaikhana-man”, “Lovers”, another picture “The Herdsman”, unusual picture “Dreams”, several big portraits en face of old men from Sherabad and Boysun. Materialization of the idea, with wild turn of oblique eyes (“The Song”, “Lovers”), with open mouths and teeth, smiles and laugh (“The Old Man from Sherabad”, “The Singer – Bakhshi”), with song, silence and wood felling (“Hard Brushwood”), in strained turns of his rigid brush Shomirzaev gives holistic reflection of life and turns towards it. It seems that the same, well-composed composition, being drawn by another, experienced artist or by the different artists, as mushoira, would loose its main feature – powerful fascination and value of life telling through a thorn.
The exposition of Tura Shomirzaev from Surkhandarya has been not just the first personal exhibition, but his first presentation in the capital. Tura was born in Boysun in 1941 and till 1959 lived in the Boysun children’s home. He graduated from the Rebublican Art College and the Tashkent Institute of Theatre and Art. His major speciality is ceramics. For Surkhandarya artists, who beginning with R. Chariev formed a local line within art, a way to Art can be compared with a struggle for life.
After graduating from the Institute T. Shomirzaev survived a devotion to monumental and decorative ceramics as well as contacts with architects. During three years he taught in the Samarkand Architectural Institute and during several years trained in the Moscow Architectural Institute and worked at construction sites in Dushanbe and Tashkent. The cooperation with specialists from the Rishtan Art Ceramics Center in the Fergana valley had high importance. The echo of comprehension of original art ceramics has preserved in his pictures.
From 1976 Tura has stayed in Boysun – he is coming back to himself. From early 90s he began to practice in painting. Position of T. Shomirzaev is offensive: to tell about each and all by means of everyday subjects with sharpened feeling of experience. The self-portrait reflected the arduous work of thoughts. The head, thrown up in fixed attention, is pointed out of the crowd and makes to follow his look. The people don’t part with the earth. The artist is in the thick of a crowd.
Stable democratism of Tura Shomirzaev’s art gives evidence for folkways and ideals. Benevolent moods fill the realistic specifity of the native land. Legends and everyday life are closely linked. The stability opposes the historical changeableness. There isn’t a strong fluctuation between lyrical pictures “Barchinoi”, “Fiancee”, “Woman and Dave”, “Artist’s Daughter” and journalism sharpness of pictures “It doesn’t leave me in peace”, “Earth and Sky”, “The Man is working”, “The Good and Bad”, “The Earth”. Rhythmically composed poetry equally colors the characters. Tura Shomirzaev knows well the universal art history but his midst, natural and ethnographic environ with its ancient mode of life and inspiring folk creativity, which Ruzi Chariev and his friends moved forward to world fame, has remained a main source for his work.
T. Shomirzaev glorifies the natural life, sings about the love for earth, and a picturesque artist occurs in it. Hardened melody accompanies humanism of his truthful creativity and unintentional journalism sharpness. A line of Shomirzaev says much, it forms “verbal” pitch in creation of a character; it contains getting over subject material. A women is grazing a goat, a man is gathering the brushwood, a herdsman is singing, another herdsman is riding the horse, two young people are embracing, a paysanne with a bag full of apples is sitting in turn, probably waiting for a car. Yes, it is a subject, it is an action. A man, who reached the frontier between life and death, is sure that actually a day of life is a real event.
Shomirzaev – ceramist is good in rounded contour that is prompted by a smooth completion of a form; managing the painting he makes a composition by means of build-up and cutting down the angular lines, guessing the amplitude and basing on the experience in his work on mosaic joints of majolica in ceramic panels. In many respects, his experience in the work on big walls can explain his liberty, but basic impulse moving expression of his pictures is the deepest intuition, thanks to which, escaping from details, he creates a deep space of human being.
Sharp linearity is not only a feature specifying expressive methods of Turakhon. Sometimes he uses a risky enlargement of portraits, when a face occupies the entire surface, and the inspired artist creates a face, laughing by each wrinkle, carefully transmitting the similarity. Such portraits bears much kind nativity and sincere openness; framed together, tens of photos of different years, greeting any guest in traditional houses and narrating the history of the family, enrich each portrait. Colorful irritants of “Dreams” with a blue bull in excruciating posture on a lemon – yellow backgroundc, “The Herdsman” with black sun in zenith and hard gravity of anthropomorphic fragments of “Earth and Sky” form tension of his plastics.
The exposition of Tura Shomirzaev under the author’s title “Longing for Life” has consisted of 60 pictures. It is appropriate to mention the words of Turakhon from booklet “A few words about myself”: “I devote to the painting because I can not refuse to paint things, which makes my soul to feel a pain. I can not paint just a nature. The people, their sorrows and joys have always excited me. In my works I wanted to express my relation to the world I live in.” One says, he has mild character, and at the vernissage he looked like an artist from Montmartre. Yes, this sign marks far from each chosen one.
Author: Rimma Eremyan