Original Artist Sabitjan Bakashev

Painter and easel artist S. Bakashev with a heightened sense of plasticity

Sabitjan Bakashev possesses a vividly decorative vision of pictorial form, typically linking the search for artistic expressiveness with the spatial interaction of painting and architecture. Like other monumentalists, he participated in group projects (alongside A. Voronin, A. Kamensky, Z. Khabibulin, I. Chokoev, and others), for example, in the artistic design of the "Kyrgyzstan" cinema in Moscow, the circus building in Frunze, and the "Issyk-Kul" sanatorium. He is known as an easel painter with a heightened sense of plasticity and the decorative resonance of color. As an original artist, he emerged in the
1960s, creating an interesting ceramic panel on the facade of the House of Culture of the K. Marx Collective Farm in the Ton District (1965), notable for its pictorial and plastic qualities. In developing the theme of modern collective farm life, Bakashev approached it using the traditions of Kyrgyz folk art. This is evident in the character of the flat composition, the use of elements of national ornamentation, and the richness of color built on a combination of a few colors. The large form, the free relationship of figures with the background, and the color harmony dominated by red and blue testify to the young artist's attention to the features of folk decor.

S. Bakashev (with the participation of I. Chokoev) worked on the creation of tempera painting in the interior of the "Manas" airport (1984). The compositions "Rising Sun of Ala-Too" and "Swans Flying Over Issyk-Kul" are located on opposite end walls along the staircases leading to the waiting area on the second floor. These monumental panels create an image of a sunny mountainous region. Painted broadly and boldly, with an enhanced sense of the decorativeness of color, they emotionally convey the character of the majestic nature of Kyrgyzstan, with the grandeur of its mountain landscapes, the blueness of lakes and skies, and the coolness of shady gorges overgrown with blue Tien Shan firs. The painting, entering the scale of the spacious, well-lit hall, gives it a major, festive, and artistically distinctive quality.