Jumabay Umetov is an applied artist by nature and profession, who engages extensively in landscape painting, finding in the living nature a source of his creative fantasies.
In the landscape genre, he seeks original motifs of nature, demonstrating his heightened sensitivity to the plastic and color decorative qualities of natural realities, processing them according to the task at hand. And although painting in Umetov's work serves a certain purpose, in terms of its artistic merits, it occupies an equal, if not more significant, place than applied art.
In the compositional constructions of his landscapes, Umetov adheres to the established principles of Kyrgyz painting. The strength of his individuality is primarily manifested in color, always resolved in tense decorativeness and harmonious subordination of contrasting or closely related tones of pure color. Overall, thanks to his academically precise drawing, realistically interpreted space while adhering to the laws of perspective, Umetov's paintings are realistic despite their decorative quality.
Characteristic examples include the paintings "Fresh Morning" (1968) and "Autumn Silence" (1975), in which the artist managed to convey the coolness of a summer morning and his poetic experience of nature within the framework of a conventionally decorative style, and "Master of the Cloudy Mountains" (1969) with the vivid plasticity of mountains and clouds. In "Fresh Morning," the space is treated flatly, as in a decorative panel, while in "Master of the Cloudy Mountains," it is emphasized volumetrically.
A remarkable master of realistic landscape is Ablabek Dairov. His painting "Maman's Vastness" (1970) serves as an example of creatively interpreted adherence to the best traditions of Kyrgyz landscape painting, primarily the lyrical painting of S. Akylbekov. The painting skillfully conveys a fresh, cool cloudy day with a cloudy sky in the vast steppe overgrown with chiy. The color solution is built on closely related tones, accurately conveying the real light combination of a particular natural state.
The artist pays tribute to the portrait and everyday genre, demonstrating observation and the ability to convey the nationally distinctive through realistic means.
In terms of landscape interpretation, Adam Bek Jumashov is close to him ("Gray Day," 1972).
In the 1960s and 70s, the greatest interest among Kyrgyz painters was in working on thematic paintings, where their individuality was more vividly expressed. The artistic handwriting of the painters was strongly influenced by the schooling they received in various art institutes of the country.
This influence was particularly evident at the beginning of the artists' creative paths, in the staged nature of tasks, the demonstration of professional skills learned from direct teachers, and the borrowing of plots and themes.
There was also a certain influence from the popular fascination with primitivism and other movements among this generation of artists. However, the local artistic environment, which did not support imitation, forced young artists to seek independent paths in art, taking into account the main achievements of the Kyrgyz painting school.
Despite the diversity of their stylistic searches, artists of all generations share a heightened demand for a truthful depiction of the nature of Kyrgyzstan and the characteristic features of the life of its people, a special sensitivity to what Chuykov defined as the "spirit of Kyrgyzstan," which is primarily expressed through the poetic nature of the figurative system of the realistic painting language.
This poetic quality, perceived more through intuition than reason, was achieved by artists in various ways, with a higher value placed on solutions where the artist's lyrical experience was expressed not only and not so much through theme, motif, or plot, but through the character of the drawing, composition, color system, and the texture of the painted surface — that is, what defines the culture of artistic form and its stylistics.
