Memorial-Decorative Genre of Tombstones in Kyrgyzstan

The Beginning of the Development of the Tombstone Genre.
In the last decade, the development of the traditional memorial-decorative genre of tombstones in the art of sculpture has begun in Kyrgyzstan. For several years, sculptor 3. Khabibulin worked on the tombstone of the brilliant Kyrgyz ballerina B. Beishenaliev, who left this world too soon. The sculptor took his task very seriously and decided to create a figure for the first time in the memorial plastic of Kyrgyzstan, relating it to the environment. However, in the figurative and plastic solution of the tombstone monument, he unfortunately went against traditional folk notions of plasticity, female beauty, ethics, and the specific image of the actress. He introduced an expressive sharpness of generalization, drama, and expression into the soft lyrical image of the dancer. The form here is rigid, modern, and largely unacceptable to the people's perception of the poetic legend that has become the image of Beishenaliev. The created tombstone did not satisfy the artist himself, remaining an open creative problem for him. Khabibulin continues to seek a more harmonious solution for the monument in terms of figurative and plastic characteristics and its connection to the environment.

Among the notable works of memorial sculpture, in terms of artistic-psychological persuasiveness and emotional mood, are the tomb busts of actor M. Ryskulov and composer A. Maldybaev. The first was sculpted in granite by Turgunbay Sadykov, and the second — a bronze bust — by Viktor Arnoldovich Shestopal. Both busts are executed in a traditional realistic manner, sufficiently revealing the image of a specific personality and bearing the imprint of an individual sculptural language. The work of
T. Sadykov sounds generalized and monumental. In the bronze portrait bust of A. Maldybaev, created by V. Shestopal, the plastic character of the composer's appearance and contemplative-lyrical intonations are emphasized.