DEPARTING BAKUVIAN

In the room where the talented painter Zaur Aliyev lived until 6 March 1997, everything remains as it was during his lifetime. There are his sunglasses, the Rubik cube, watches, postcards, pins, a wallet with business cards and notes from 1997, notebooks and ... a lot of artwork: complete and in outline. It is a great legacy that requires careful study, systematizing and rethinking.

Zaur Aliyev was only 26 years old when he unexpectedly departed this world of his loving parents, relatives and friends. Although his life was too short, it was also very bright and intense. His earliest drawings stood out for their fine composition and confident firm hand. They were shown in children's exhibitions in Europe, America and even Africa (Congo, Angola and Mali). Here are the characters of his favourite cartoons, arranged in the same airspace and maintaining a certain unity of friendship, personality, mood and character. And here is a series of drawings under the titles "Battle Scenes" and "War". Most striking is the well thought-out composition, the density of pattern, the plot, the dynamic expression of conflict and ... the pacifist pathos of sound! The boy drew war not because he liked it, but because war is a tragedy that can cause pain and suffering to everyone, even to the bravest and strongest warrior. It does not matter whether it is a Roman legionary, or a political officer with a pistol in his hand, urging soldiers to storm the enemy ... War is bad. But man must be a warrior: strong, smart and courageous, and at the same time, wise and humane. None of his works contain aggression, blood or horror. The battle scenes are not an anthem to war. They are an anthem to the human spirit and trained body. There is something of a Hellenistic approach which glorifies the harmony of mind and body. The warrior must be considered a hero, not a destroyer. This is little Zaur's idea. It is, perhaps, quite natural because, at the age of three, he first learned about karate. He was carried away with this. His mother, Nigar Pasazada, a linguist (Polish and a group of Slavic languages), led a group of Vietnamese students studying the Russian language. It is clear that additional individual sessions were often held at home when the students also had a chance to eat. The three-year-old Zaur always attracted the attention and sympathy of adults. The Vietnamese were no exception. When the boy wished to learn to fight "like a ninja", he was honestly told that everything would be for real and no-one would go easy on him. The boy was surprisingly quick to learn. And from that time, he took a great interest not only in martial arts, but also in eastern philosophy, languages and oriental culture. Zaur had a good command of Vietnamese and Chinese. He knew how to read, write and translate without a dictionary. He began studying the Korean language. The huge, thick notebooks in hard covers, covered with his explanatory texts and characters, were left lying in his room. He did not have time to complete this course, like many other projects, for example, to release his album "The Sights of Old Baku" and a course to teach graphic art and sculpture which he was expected to begin in Trabzon (Turkey) that year. Numerous figures of the heroes of martial arts and various oriental philosophers still stand on the closet, and his favourite characters - Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson - are talking to each other here. Each sculpture has its own life. It is not easy. Accurately conveying the form and dynamics of the human body in interaction with some thought which opens living space, each of the sculptures is a whole story: about life, personality and even fate. A barefoot Brahmaputra who contemplates his own hand as if it were the universe - who is he? Do we know what he was like? If he existed, of course. Zaur shows him barefoot and with beads in his hands. Brahmaputra is the son of the God Brahma. What prompted him to descend into the world, forgetting about himself? Perhaps it was a feeling of incompleteness and lack of existence. And maybe the stars and wise heavenly bodies winked mysteriously and slyly at him every night, hinting that it was unbecoming of the son of God to remain in the same place - you need to follow the path and open new horizons - because so much is unknown. "A learner is reluctant to enter the water, not because it is dirty, but because it is shallow," thought Brahmaputra.

Zaur Aliyev had a passion for writing down eastern sayings. But not for the sake of erudition. The wisdom of previous generations who had travelled the path of self-improvement was a practical instruction for him, which he directed towards the organization of his own thoughts about himself and the outside world. So, among all these sculptures on the stand, there is a small board on which he had written in his own hand poems that seem to have been his mottoes and guides:

 Learning the foundations, you comprehend the essence of the new. 

What's old, what's new - time cannot be deceived.

Carry the clarity of the spirit through the years!

Who will travel their path flawlessly to the very end?

And behind all this, there is an attempt to find and feel the precise point at the junction of time which allows everyone to go their way without starting from scratch. It is a connecting link in the chain of time. And he sought it in the ancient wisdom of the East and its culture and philosophy. His uncle Anvar Pasazada remarked, with how much interest and love he delved into the history of national culture! Here he had a great and luminous dream - to bring painters from all over the Muslim world here in Baku and to unite them around the idea of preserving peace and life on the planet. He did not have the time to do it, alas. But! In 1990, Zaur received a letter from the international organization Greenpeace, from Academician Aleksandr Lakshin: "You are one of the few people who have been requested to support Greenpeace in person." He did. He actually did not have to be asked to do so. Zaur was internally ready for such a move, and had been for a long time. The problems of the lack of harmony between the world and man interested him enormously. He rapidly created a series of graphic works on this subject. Here is one of them - "The Instruction". It depicts a very old man lovingly watching a toddler crawl towards his outstretched hands. Here it is - the wisdom of mankind, which our ancestors willingly passed on from generation to generation in order to preserve and strengthen the moral foundations designed to improve the spirit and the idea of mankind. And here is "Man and Nature": a dolphin and a man play together in the depths of the ocean. The dolphin smiles, holding the man's hand in its mouth. They feel good together. It seems that these two have managed to recover the knowledge, confidence and understanding of each other which were lost in the days of the Avesta. And here is an unsigned work. A plate of wood resembling a human hand shows a man and a woman. They are inseparable and stand before God the way they came into this world. They are not covered by clothing and, therefore, they have none of the detritus of convention which can obscure the truth. But they are lost and confused: how fragile and small is the world they own! How to save this cradle of humanity? How? The man's hand, as befits the chief, stretches out to heaven. Is it a plea and request for help? Is it a cry to humanity?

Zaur the artist and Zaur the man wanted to discuss this with the world. I wanted to be heard. Thus this creative forum of artists of the Muslim world was so important for him! He believed that the wisdom underlying Islam would help people find this lost harmony. He believed, hoped and dreamed. And now there are works that only partially reflect this goal. These are graphic works that appeared in an exhibition dedicated to protecting not only the environment but also the habitat of man and his biosphere. In any event, he had so many exhibitions during his life that he had probably come to see them as something ordinary and even commonplace. He had exhibited his works since childhood and had received numerous diplomas and awards! After all, he was so versatile in his interests and talents that he treated everything as a normal and customary phenomenon. As a child, he was educated in classical music and was a frequenter of all concert programmes in the Philharmonia, performances at the Russian Drama Theatre, the Opera and Ballet Theatre, the many and varied exhibitions of fine arts and feature films at the Vatan cinema. He absorbed all this quite organically and became someone that a few managed to recognize during his lifetime. Of course, genetic predisposition - his father Rasim Aliyev is an architect and one of his grandparents was predisposed to painting, although he did not study it as a craft - contributed to the individuality of Zaur Aliyev. This is undeniable. And when some foreigners, on seeing his mature works in America and then in Paris, said - "this man is either insane or a genius", they were probably not too far from the truth. We have yet to resolve the question.

But there was still something mystical in his life. Or maybe this is just our uneducated opinion. One thing is undeniable - he travelled a path predestined. Buying books about martial arts and philosophy, he certainly advanced further than mere mortals can imagine. What did he find on this path? He could help people with his psychic abilities. But who knows what concentration of energy these experiments required? Yes, sometimes he very reluctantly agreed if someone aware of his abilities asked about it. Sometimes he needed time in order to focus his energy and direct it to heal a suffering person... He studied oriental martial arts and knew what it meant - this concentration of energy. Zaur also had a terrific intuition! By the time his uncle Anvar Pasazada's book "The Three Missing Cathedrals" was published, he miraculously managed to use only half of the surviving images of the mosque in Bibiheybat to restore all the others. He also guessed that a tree had grown nearby! How surprised people around him were when, after some time, it was actually confirmed! The same thing happened when it came to restoring the image of the Nicholas Cathedral in Baku, which was blown up by the Bolsheviks during the revolution! In any case, he was endowed from childhood with a special sensitivity. On realising this, his dad, his first teacher and mentor in acquiring mastery of skills in drawing, suggested that his son comprehend the wisdom of the craft also by the tactile method, studying the location and grouping of muscles in the human body with his fingers and hands. "Touch this muscle on my arm here," he asked his son. "Do you feel where it is located? So this is how it should be located in this man..." Thus the characters in his works are so palpably alive, realistic and convincing in their expression of human emotions, moods and character! There is a series of unfinished pencil sketches - "The Classic Dances of Peace" and a series of works entitled "Christianity, Islam and Judaism". It is not only the highest technique and absolute talent of the young artist but also a deep philosophical thought, the same Aesopian language that allows the artist to speak to mankind all over the world, overcoming language barriers and geographical boundaries.

...Zaur was cheerful and friendly and was a very good boy. He studied at school No 6 and perhaps many of his classmates and teachers remember him that way. He brought light and good to the world, but, apparently, he took on a heavy burden of responsibility for the fate of the world. Here's one of his graphic works in which man - the overthrown king of nature - is on his knees with his back to us, between the truth of the universe and his own sins which form a huge grid and block his way. As hope for salvation, there is a tiny ladder, bypassing the lattice. There is always a way out! You only need to find it! Otherwise, why do we come into this world?

He was born on 28 March 1970 and died on 6 March. The day before, he suddenly came into his parents' bedroom and asked for permission to lie between his father and mother - as in childhood when he was ill. He was still ill. And his parents were ill too. Both. In the morning he went back into his room and, from there, suddenly and clearly said: "Dad, Mom, forgive me if I inadvertently offended you." No-one attached any special significance to these words. However, his neighbours who came to see him say that he then asked them for forgiveness. He told friends who were planning to visit the Aliyevs on 28 March that it was impossible because when they called, they would be told that Zaur was no more. He knew this in advance. Intuition? Premonition? Ability to see through time? He sought his own way. And he found it. Only God knows why his way was so short, though very bright. The boy broke into this life as a bright star, and flying rapidly over the comet called Creativity, he went even further - perhaps to mountain heights. We just have to remember him and his work as they live on: his thoughts, his heart... And there is the feeling that he has just gone out to meet his friends, because his room, populated by the characters he created, continues its own mysterious life in which the characters of his works continue to live their lives in anticipation of their master. He's only left for a short time, right? And he is about to come back...

We decided so when his uncle gave us Zaur's drawing and said: "It's called "Departing Bakuvian." I looked and shuddered: the figure of man receding from us did not resemble Zaur - such a tall (he was 1.76 metres tall!) and physically developed young man! It did not resemble him! But! This little man, the bouquet hidden behind his back, his slow, reckless steps and the waving of his stick had something that gripped my heart and gave me a lump in my throat. And Pasternak's lines surfaced (quite inappropriately!) in memory:

I am alone, all drowned in pharisaism:

Living a life is not crossing a field!

 Such a poignant and expressive work! But, most likely, Zaur is not alone there. Bulgakov's characters Master and Pontius Pilate suddenly appeared before my eyes. They have continued their conversation for many centuries... Zaur must have his own interlocutors there on the opposite bank of the Lethe. They are his teachers and mentors who helped to foster his spirit and mind through his works...