Until the 1960s, Ignatiev's work predominantly featured Kyrgyz themes, primarily related to rural life, which led to a traditional blending of genre with landscape ("The Horsemen", 1960). This allowed the artist to address the problem of plein air painting, emphasizing the state of nature, which imparted a poetic contemplativeness to genre motifs, typically interpreted as eventless.
Working alongside artists of strong and vivid talent, Ignatiev maintained an independent vision of nature and developed an individual pictorial language. In his landscapes and mixed-genre paintings, he accurately conveys the character of the plasticity and color of the highlands ("At the Pass", 1971-1972; "The Herds are Coming to Susamyr", 1972; "On the Roads of Kyrgyzstan", 1975). In the 1970s and 1980s, the theme of Russia resonated with great emotional strength in Ignatiev's work, especially in the triptych "Homeland" (1976) ("Come to Us, Quiet Evening", "The City of Valuyki", "Valuyki Forest"), and in the paintings "My Childhood" ("In the Valuyki Forest", 1973-1976; "Day of Remembrance at Prokhorovka" (1985).
However, the central focus of the artist's work during this period is industrial themes related to the construction of the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station. Ignatiev visited the construction site several times, creating a unique chronicle through a series of plein air studies and compositional canvases.
Previously, while working on agricultural themes, Ignatiev painted a number of genre canvases, but he approached the industrial theme from a landscape perspective, depicting the site of one of the largest hydroelectric stations in the republic in stages.
He belongs to the generation of Chuykov and Aitieva, yet from the very beginning of his creative journey, he distinguished himself with a programmatic commitment to an impressionistic style of painting—using pure color and separated textured strokes that create a distinctive pictorial mosaic when combined.
In the series of paintings dedicated to the construction of the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station ("Naryn is Blocked", "Evening in the Village of Karakol", "At the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station", 1965, "Bridges Hang Over the Naryn", 1971), the artist emerged as a lyrical landscape painter, depicting nature transformed by human hands in its monumental beauty. He was interested in the construction site itself, buzzing with machinery, gray from the dust of blasted rock and concrete. From canvas to canvas, he portrayed a narrow gorge, almost never showing the sky, thus compositionally stepping away from the canons that had emerged in Kyrgyz landscape painting. Seeking to convey the scale of the construction through visual means, the artist consciously emphasized the grandeur of the sheer cliffs with a narrow strip of the Naryn River, while the construction site with its dusty roads, moving machinery, and workers was depicted merely as part of the landscape. His attitude towards what was happening was conveyed through vibrant color, caring little for its materiality. The monochrome rocks and almost always murky waters of the Naryn were transformed by Ignatiev into a vivid celebration of color, organized in one or another palette. The state of nature also interested him little, except for the painting "Evening in the Village of Karakol", where the evening, almost nighttime state is resolved as musical variations of blue color with rhythmically arranged flashes of electric lighting.
While working on color composition, the artist applies strokes in a rhythm dictated not so much by the form of the object as by the musical theme resonating in his soul. This new tendency in Ignatiev's work was particularly vivid in the painting "Waves and Horses" (1969-1970). If in the Toktogul cycle this approach to the brushstroke somewhat undermined the materiality of the rocks, making the immobile appear mobile and thus contradicting the form of the object and the nature of its existence, in "Waves and Horses," the rhythmically and lightly applied strokes of pure color merged with the movement of waves, wind, and the plasticity of horses, creating an image of a living, dynamic natural element.
The experience gained from working on the Toktogul cycle influenced his painting style in works of other themes. The pictorial surface became more textured, the color brighter, and the strokes broader and bolder. The artist retained the poetic excitement of the imagery while addressing more openly defined formal tasks. An example of this is the triptych "On Kyrgyz Land" ("Evening", "Ulan is Coming", "Noon", 1982-1983), in which earlier experiences of plein air landscape painting are synthesized with the experience gained from the Toktogul cycle to convey the natural state while preserving the decorative quality of the pictorial texture.