Sculptural Monuments. Toktogul Satylganov
The monument to Toktogul Satylganov— the greatest representative of Kyrgyz culture.
In the 1960s, the issue of creating a monument to Toktogul Satylganov — the greatest representative of Kyrgyz culture during a pivotal era, whose work is inextricably linked to national folklore and became the starting point for Kyrgyz professional literature — continued to concern the sculptors of the republic. The image of Toktogul, a talented poet and musician, a singer of the revolution, a man who did not separate his creative personality from the fate of his people, is extremely appealing for embodiment in monumental plastic form.
The responsible task of creating a monumental image of Toktogul had long stirred and attracted the attention of sculptors. As early as 1939, sculptor O. M. Manuilova and architect Yu. Gradov were invited to work on the project for the monument to Toktogul, whose anniversary the republic celebrated in 1942. The sculptor envisioned a composition featuring Toktogul on horseback with a komuz in his hands, surrounded by people. The model of the monument was completed and accepted in 1940, but it was not realized.
The first embodiment of Toktogul's image in monumental sculpture was a figurative monument created in 1968 by the then-young sculptor T. Sadykov for the city of Osh. This was one of the sculptor's first monumental works. In the image of the people's favorite, who raised his voice in defense of the oppressed people, who endured royal exile and wholeheartedly embraced the ideas of revolution and international brotherhood of the working class, Sadykov primarily saw the courage of a fighter. This is how he depicted his hero. The creation of the monument was preceded by Sadykov's creative experience with a studio image of Toktogul, in which the sculptor captured the multifaceted nature and uniqueness of the akyn's character. However, in the monument's design, he abandoned attempts at iconographic reproduction of Toktogul's external appearance, boldly focusing his plastic search on expressing the traits of Toktogul's personality as a people's defender.
Sadykov's Toktogul is young and energetic. His figure, sitting freely on a stone with a komuz in his lowered hand, is stable, generalized, and expresses courage of spirit. This is evident in his face — stern, resolutely focused, with a glimmer of lively intellect and readiness to act. In Sadykov's interpretation, Toktogul primarily emerges as a fighter for the happiness of the people.
Even in this early work, as well as in the monuments created during the same period to K. Marx for the collective farm named after K. Marx in the Ton district (1966) and to M. I. Kalinin for the eponymous collective farm in the At-Bashinsky district (1966), Sadykov demonstrated an understanding of monumental sculptural form, its purpose to express the spiritual essence and socio-civic ideas of the time.
