The singer of the mountain nature of Kyrgyzstan was the prematurely deceased artist-climber Afanasy Lazarevich Shubin, who worked in linocut, lithography, and etching. In his best prints, he created a romantic image of the highlands and the courage of people. The difficulties of hiking life, the brilliance of unconquered peaks, the sharp taste of risk, a moment of silence before the assault, the triumph of victory—all of this naturally and effortlessly found its way onto his sheets. This was his life. Mountains and people, the elements and human daring—this main theme of the artist's work is multifacetedly embodied in the prints "Breakfast on Ice" (lithography, 1962), "Besh-Tau" (linocut, 1962), "Among the Cracks" (color linocut, 1962), "Wet Snow" (color linocut, 1963), "Rest on the Way" (linocut, 1966), "In the Glaciers" (linocut, 1967), "On the Closed Glacier" (linocut, 1967), "The Birth of Clouds" (linocut, 1967), "On the Ridge" (linocut, 1967, fig. 209). The print "Before the Assault" (1966) presents a spectacular sight—an intricate jumble of sharp mountain peaks, dizzying steep slopes, swirling clouds, contrasts of shadows on the summit cuts of rocks, and dazzling ice glimmering. Before this monumental magnificence of nature, the silhouettes of climbers froze in a moment of silence, preparing to measure their strength against the elements. Shubin's engravings are simply cut, without special decorative effects. Their strength lies in the beauty of the motif and the sincerity of an artist in love with the mountains, of whom his climbing companion, writer L. Dyadyuchenko, said: "Height was difficult for him. The more stubbornly he climbed it."
