Satar Aitieva took his own path in stationary painting, having obtained a degree as a film set designer at VGIK. At the beginning of his creative journey, he still relied on the experience of film masters, creating sketches for an unrealized film based on K. Dzhusubaliev's story "The Sun Has Not Finished Its Self-Portrait." In these sketches, the psychology of pictorial convention emerged, along with a love for pure painterliness and a delicate organization of color composition. His work is characterized by an associative approach to themes, where convention acts as a self-value in all its components, both figurative-narrative and color-painterly. Thus, in all of S. Aitieva's works, the environment transforms into an exquisite play of brushstrokes that create a moiré waviness of the depicted space ("Apricots"). His conditional space is always alive, filled with tenderness and depth, evoking musical associations,
not formed into any specific images, but disturbing and exciting with an elusive uncertainty.
In "Portrait of a Contemporary" (1969) and the group portrait "Poets. Dedication" (1973), the artist conveys the psychological depth of the images through complexly painted works, immersing the depicted individuals in their world of thoughts while carefully preserving their mystery.
In the painting "My Father" (1975), which reflects the theme of the Great Patriotic War, the plot-content aspect is also conveyed purely associatively: the orphaned mother and son sit at a low round table, each experiencing the bitterness of loss in their own way. The mood of sadness is created by the images of an old woman in a traditional dress, a boy, and, significantly for S. Aitieva's work, the character of the painterly and coloristic solution.
As a rule, the paintings of this artist are devoid of plot; their pathos and figurative depth are achieved through the expressiveness of form. In a number of works ("Song," 1981), the artist simplified the image of a person to a schematically volumetric sign, a kind of puppet with a ghostly life flowing in a closed space-time according to its microcosmic laws.
Outwardly static works by S. Aitieva possess the quality of internal movement, the passion of vague dreams, expressed, however, through a clearly formulated painterly system.
A new step in the development of his unique talent is the diptych "The Apotheosis of War," created for the 40th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. In this diptych, the artist managed to express a strong rejection of war through the theme of women.
While works like "Song" have a chamber-like sound, the diptych "The Apotheosis of War" resonates like a symphony of complex social content. Here, the artist rejected any narrative illustration in addressing the theme, resorting to the language of allegory, which expresses an abstract concept through a concrete image. The naked female figures, painted with exceptional plastic power, are depicted in a kind of ritual ecstasy, the character of which is deciphered by the dynamics of the spatial environment created by the polyphony of color and texture whirlwinds.
