FROM THE YASHMAK TO THE PAINT BRUSH

As part of the 'Property of the People' cultural project, sponsored and supported by the Xalq Bank OJSC, an exhibition and album of paintings by State prize winner, holder of the "Shokhrat" (Glory) order, People's Artist of Azerbaijan and its first female professional artist, Maral Rahmanzadeh, was presented in a celebratory ceremony.

The impressive works displayed are indicative of a wide-ranging talent: landscapes, graphics, linocuts, water colours, portraits, sketches… All Maral's canvases combine a striking spirituality: each giving a sense of unique energy and love for her Motherland. Maral Rahmanzadeh's splendid drawings poetically capture Azerbaijan's wondrous beauty. A fine illustrator, she has succeeded in encapsulating all the wisdom and depth of ethnic folklore. Having lived a quite amazing life, she is not only Azerbaijan's first female professional artist, but she has also discovered new subjects for fine art, bringing fresh nuances to age-old themes.

At first glance there are a number of paradoxes in the life story of the young Maral Rahmanzadeh, who was born on 23 July 1916. Until she reached sixth grade, this grand-daughter of a glazier from the Absheron village of Mardakan, even wore the yashmak to school. But ten years later, in 1940, she was the first Azerbaijani girl to graduate from Moscow's V.I.Surikov Arts Institute and become a professional artist. Her first thesis, on the women of Azerbaijan, was rated very highly by the then dean of the Surikov Institute, eminent artist and art critic, Igor Grabar, thus singling her out from other graduates. As a talented young specialist and with great hopes as a book illustrator on leaving college, Maral Rahmanzadeh was sent to the literature publishing house in Moscow. But, to everyone's surprise, Maral decided to interrupt a career which had begun so successfully and to return to her native Baku.

The rear, the front and Neftyanyye Kamni

The Great Patriotic War began soon afterwards and the young artist devoted all her talent to military patriotism. She produced propaganda posters one after another, made a series of drawings 'At the Front and in the Rear' and spared no effort in fostering others' talent by teaching at the Baku College of Arts. In the post-war years this frail, gentle and delicate woman, again to the surprise of her friends, was attracted, to use her own words, by "sea oil" and "maritime oilworkers". This was nothing to do with party or government instructions, as was the case with most artists at that time; she was following her own heart…Maral Rahmanzadeh was the first woman to decide to work at Neftanyye Kamni. She wanted to see for herself how these brave people worked and lived so hard and in the extreme conditions of the menacing and raging Caspian. She would spend whole days on the pier, watching the men assembling the derricks, the prospectors, the drillers, the underground well repair workers and the oilmen as they went about their unique daily routine…Was that not why she produced so many heartfelt, expressive, realistic and at the same time poetic, technically distinctive sketches of nature, and drawings and large-format water-colour landscapes of Neftanyye Kamni? Later these works formed an exhibition displayed for two months at Baku's Republican Arts Museum and then at Neftyanyye Kamni itself, which by that time had been acknowledged as hers and 'treated as hers permanently'. Eyewitnesses recall that her success was unexpected and stunning. There was hardly time to change the comments books, so quickly were they signed by a grateful public. 

Soon afterwards, this success was to be repeated in Moscow at the Exhibition Hall of the USSR Union of Artists on Kuznetskiy Most, where over 70 of Rahmanzadeh's drawings, water colours and lithographs went on show. And then several of Rahmanzadeh's works from Neftanyye Kamni were exhibited in an exhibition of Soviet drawings in the gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, alongside such great masters as her tutor Favorskiy, as well as Nisskiy, Vereyskiy and others. They were recognized not only in British newspaper articles about the exhibition, but also in a book published there, with a separate article devoted to her. Her album 'At our Caspian' was launched in Moscow and immediately became a rare work of bibliography. Most of the works in the album are now in the Tretyakov Gallery, the best of them being a coloured auto-lithograph "Island of the Seven Ships".

In the genes

But, as art critics quite rightly claim, there is nothing paradoxical about the way Maral Rahmanzadeh's life developed. After all, she was born in Mardakan, where the air is literally imbued with creative art. The outskirts of the village are full of national architectural monuments and applied art. Besides, Maral was not just the grand-daughter of a glazier, but also the daughter of a craftsman jeweller, who worked in filigree (he produced the most intricate articles of gold and silver, which were in great demand by eastern women - earrings, necklaces and bracelets). Her grandmother was well-known as a carpet maker, and her uncle as a stonemason (his works still adorn many homes in Mardakan). So Maral's love of art, like that of her younger sister who later became an architect, and her two sculptor brothers, was transmitted, as they say, in the genes. Maral had drawn since she was a young girl and, immediately after graduating from class 7, she joined the Baku Arts Technical College. She graduated early - within three years - and was one of several talented graduates sent to study in Moscow, to the prestigious Surikov Institute. Her teachers were such great masters of drawing as Vladimir Favorskiy, Aleksey Kravchenko, Dmitriy Moor (Orlov) and others. So there were people there to help her and to hone the talent of the novice artist.

None of this happened by chance. As time passed Maral Yusif gyzy Rahmanzadeh was justly recognized as a master of Azerbaijani graphic art. As Doctor of Arts, Professor Nureddin Habibov once said: "…many of Rakhmandze's easel drawings, linocuts, lithographs, etchings, water colours and illustrations are the most remarkable and, in a certain sense, even landmark achievements of contemporary Azerbaijani graphic art". These include, above all, such cycles of works as 'With Us on the Caspian', 'Azerbaijani Women', 'My Homeland', 'My Sisters', 'My Contemporaries', 'Sumqayyit-Rustavi' and also the surprisingly poetic and lyrical plates devoted to the wonderful nature of Azerbaijan, workers in cotton, vine and tea plantations, the orchards and, of course, the oil workers. In 1950 the artist illustrated a two-volume work of essays by J.Jabbarly. That year M.F.Akhundov's historical tale 'Deluded Stars', illustrated by Rahmanzadeh, was published. In addition, she illustrated such popular works as Pushkin's 'Yevgeniy Onegin' and Lermontov's 'Hero of Our Time'. M.S.Ordubadi's historical novel 'The Sword and the Quill', with illustrations by Rahmanzadeh, was published in Baku in 1956. In 1963 she illustrated the academic work 'Azerbaijani Fairy Tales'.

''My Homeland''

At the end of the 1950s, she created a series of coloured auto-lithographs, 'Baku', which were shown for the first time in 1959 at an exhibition to mark 'Ten Years of Azerbaijani Art and Literature' in Moscow. At the time Rahmanzadeh was working on auto-lithographs on Czechoslovakia, and then Turkey, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Greece and Cuba… In subsequent years she worked in linocuts.  She devoted her first works in this genre to the giant factories in two young towns - Sumqayyit and Rustavi. In the 1960s she visited some of Azerbaijan's isolated regions. The outcome of this trip was a new series of coloured line drawings: 'My Homeland' and 'Azerbaijan'. A master of landscape painting, this artist, who has rightly been named a People's Artist, displayed with love, to the Soviet and foreign publics, the whole charm of Azerbaijan's varied nature - the majestic hills of Naxcivan, the magnificent gardens of Quba, the ancient forests of Lenkeran, the unique world of the settlement of Khinalig, lost in the mountains as though slipped in time, and much else besides.  

Rahmanzadeh's vivid and extensive work has also won popularity far beyond Azerbaijan and other countries of the CIS. Her works adorn many famous museums around the world and are regularly successful in the most important and prestigious exhibitions (she has exhibited in over 50 countries). Academician Mikhail Abdullayev, People's Artist of the USSR and a contemporary of Maral, recalled that he does not know of another member of the Azerbaijan Arts Union, young or old, who has made as many trips as she has, both within and outside the republic.

As Omar Eldarov, a distinguished figure in the Azerbaijani art world and dean of the Azerbaijan State Arts Academy, rightly said, the name 'Maral' (deer) really does suit the artist: "The remarkable thing about Maral Rahmanzadeh is the amazing richness of her spirit and her tremendously strong will. She is a real 'Maral' - beautiful, gentle and majestic, but at the same time possessing an amazingly strong character and undisputed talent."

Farhad Khalilov, People's Artist of Azerbaijan and chairman of the Azerbaijan Union of Artists, also spoke at the presentation, noting the importance of the 'Property of the People' project and the timeliness of the exhibition of the first female professional artist of Azerbaijan, Maral Rahmanzadeh, which opened on 11 March and runs until 12 June.