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.
Many of Chuykov's sketches represent quite complex images, as they convey not only the depicted motifs but also a diverse range of feelings and reflections evoked by these motifs. Sketches of specific natural forms (for example, stones or flowing water in the painting "Living Water") are always precisely organized paintings, no less spiritually infused reproductions of nature than in spatial compositions. In landscapes, where expansive space is depicted, the artist consciously abstracted from less significant details, guided by the law of scale. He accurately conveyed the character of lighting and atmosphere through color, while the drawing, which dissolves in the color modeling of volumes and planes, expressed the tectonics of mountain ridges and the adjacent valley.
Such sketches approach compositional landscapes in the depth of the ideas expressed in them, the perfection of each form-creating element linked to the overall meaning, distinguished by elevated vitality and the individuality of specific content.
Chuykov's landscapes feature a holistic expression of the depicted space, continuous, infinite, three-dimensional, evoking not a singular sensation but a whole complex of sensations that follow one another, as when contemplating living nature.
He was able to paint air, the depth of the sky, floating clouds, and running water. He knew the secret of the junction of diverse forms. He painted shadows in such a way that they were always transparent and airy, connected to the illuminated parts through the subtlest tonal transitions. Color in his painting, with a very high emotional load, always conveys the materiality of objects and their living interconnections.
Chuykov's receptiveness to the beauty of nature and his understanding of its significance in the spiritual life of man manifested in all his works, especially resonating in his last significant composition "Touching Eternity" (1974, p. 173), which could only arise as a culmination of his entire preceding creative life.
The artist surveys earthly and heavenly expanses, not hiding his excitement and passionate love for the infinite movement of life in time and space, in which man is the most precious gift of the universe. In working on the painting, the experience of working not only on Kyrgyz themes but also on Indian ones, particularly the painting "Himalayas," was reflected.
A very significant feature of Chuykov's landscape and narrative-thematic compositions is their sunniness. The artist never painted winter or gloomy overcast days. Like nature itself, which comes to life with the warmth of spring and freezes in winter, he directly feels its life-giving power.
If in many landscapes the inclusion of a person is given as if from a distance, depersonalized, then in narrative compositions, a person is depicted in close-up, allowing for an examination of their individual traits.
Notably, Chuykov most often depicted women and children in his paintings with their inherent emotionality. Comparing his narrative-thematic paintings from the Kyrgyz and Indian cycles, one sees the significant role that the choice of themes and motifs and the nature of their interpretation play in expressing various thoughts and feelings.
Characteristic features of Chuykov's narrative-thematic paintings include reliance on a realistic form of reflecting life, the depiction of people from the depths of the people, and their social typification. His paintings do not contain any elaborate narratives.
Having set himself the task of depicting the modern life of the Kyrgyz people, Chuykov resolved it through images of rural residents, that is, the social layer that most vividly reflected the character of social changes in Kyrgyzstan with great pathos and understanding of their significance.