Drawing has always held a fundamental place in Kyrgyz visual art, which from its very beginnings has followed the path of direct study of life and its realistic representation. Remarkable life drawings that vividly reveal the principle of realistic artistic thinking were created by S. Chuykov, V. Obraztsov, B. Witz, L. Mesarosh, and G. Aitieva.
Interest in drawing increased with the arrival in Kyrgyzstan in the late 1930s of professional graphic artists L. Ilyina and A. Mikhalev. During the war, alongside local artists, evacuated artists in Frunze such as D. A. Shmarinov, N. I. Kocherhin, A. P. Mogilevsky, A. M. Lyubimov, and M. K. Gorshman also drew here. A new impetus in the development of drawing was the arrival in Kyrgyzstan in 1946 of V. A. Favorovsky, whose profound lectures on the theory of drawing and composition, as well as creative trips around the republic with a group of Kyrgyz artists (A. Mikhalev, L. Truskovsky, E. Efremenko, A. Ignatiev, O. Manuilova, and others), inspired many. From this time, especially in the 1960s to 1980s, drawing developed not only as an auxiliary material for compositional works of other art forms but also as an independent variety of unique graphics. It actively entered exhibition displays. Its revival has been particularly noticeable in the last ten to fifteen years in connection with the overall rise of Soviet easel drawing.
Alongside masters such as L. Ilyina, A. Sgibnev, and A. Mikhalev, a new generation of artists with individual styles, including A. Ostashev, R. Nudel, E. Kuzovkin, B. Dzhumabekov, Dzh. Dzhumabekov, V. Gladkov, B. Koshoyev, M. Akhmedov, N. Evdokimov, and a number of young graphic artists, are also at work.
