The Creativity of S. Chuykov

The restlessness of the creative interests of artists, sensitive to the most important aspects of art — to poetry and truth, to true artistic expression, that is, to the aesthetic modeling of the real lives of people and their spiritual quests, testifies to the life-giving nature of the process of development in Kyrgyz painting. This process encompasses the entire dynamic of contradictions both between form and content and within the very issues of form creation.
Spiritual needs, reflecting changes in social life, present artists with creative tasks, the resolution of which, as practice shows, requires not only the search for innovative means of expressing emerging ideas but also reliance on traditions — on all the progressive achievements humanity has created throughout its history.
The creativity of S. Chuykov in the 1960s to 1980s thematically and stylistically continues the preceding period.
The innovative explorations of Soviet painting during this period had little impact on Chuykov in terms of formal issues, although he closely followed emerging trends and actively participated in discussions of controversial creative problems.
The evolution in the choice of themes and motifs for composition in Chuykov's work shifted from multi-figured and eventful scenes to fewer figures and a lack of events. He was primarily interested in the inner meaning of existence, which he saw in the closeness of man and nature. In the imagery of his paintings, landscape played a significant role, most directly expressing the poetic mood, along with a certain type of person, not formally connected to nature.

By depicting nature and human existence as a certain wholeness, the artist deepened the theme with an emotionally resonant painting language.
Harmoniously clear, pure color shapes volume in a delicate interplay with the environment; the unobtrusive texture, which nevertheless reveals the artist's love for vigorous brushwork, merged in his works with the character of the depicted motif into a complex artistic image rich in associations.
From sketch to painting, the artist went through a lengthy process. Typically, he contemplated several themes simultaneously, subordinating his sketch work to them, and sought compositional structures in numerous sketches.
He early developed an ideal of a person from the depths of the people, natural and close to nature. In his narrative-thematic, portrait, and landscape paintings, a recurring theme emerges — the theme of humanism.
In the diversity of aspects of social life, he selected only those for his work that aligned with his creative program.
In working on the embodiment of his themes (or rather, plots within a unified theme), Chuykov, like any professional artist, thoughtfully addressed issues of form.
In his search for the necessary artistic expressiveness, he found like-minded individuals among the masters of the past — Alexander Ivanov and Paul Cézanne, that is, among those artists who addressed these issues through a system of color and painterly plasticity, possessing the deepest emotional impact.