ON THE STREET, TO THE EASEL, BACK TO THE STREET

The Dutch and Flemish schools of painting greatly influenced Rafiq Asgarov. His lush and vibrant still lifes are packed with passionate youthful exuberance. The bright-coloured, velvety flowers and the greenery of the leaves, the tall silver wine pitchers, the grapes transparent like glass and the pomegranates broken open, all speak of eastern abundance that is called upon to delight the eye. The original painting technique and the classical manner of execution appears to mingle eastern and western styles. The artist's talent consists in the fact that the author is not simply admiring beautiful things, but is capable of conveying to the viewer the magical aroma of the fruits, the freshness of the cut flowers and a sense of the warmth of the southern breeze… The artist Rafiq ASGAROV talked to Regionplus about the secret of "bringing to life" the flowers and fruits on the canvases, about his childhood and his career.

- Could you please tell us something about your childhood. You probably started drawing while you were still very young?

- I was born into the family of a worker and a housewife in Baku in 1953. There were seven children in the family, and I was the youngest. All of them were gifted at drawing. My brother Aziz who was 19 years older than me was the first in the family to become an artist. He graduated from the Azim Azimzada Art School and the Institute of Arts [State University of Culture and Arts]. Aziz would spend days working without a break in the small studio which he had converted from a tiny little flat located on the floor above us. My brother was suffering from heart disease. My parents were worried about his health and tried to make sure they were never far away from him. When Aziz went out to deal with his affairs, I would quietly steal into his studio and, holding my breath, I would look at the art postcards that he frequently brought back from Moscow.

At that time, there was a real shortage of books on art, but postcards of works by the great artists were being published. I particularly liked the realistic works of [Russian artists] Viktor Vasnetsov and Ilya Repin. I was six years old and dreamt of learning to draw like my brother. In 1969, when he unexpectedly passed away, I entered the Azim Azimzada Art School.

In my childhood I was a sickly child, and the doctors even told my parents that "he will not live long" on this Earth. My parents did everything they possibly could to improve my health: they took me to different doctors and sent me to all kinds of sanatoria on the Absheron peninsula. In the breaks between sanatoria, when I came to the city, something always seemed to happen to me. I was a fidgety and mischievous child. I was knocked down three times by a motor vehicle; once I fell out of the first-floor window and another time I got stabbed. When we were playing, the older children moved in the wrong direction and almost poked me in the eye. But no matter what happened to me, it seemed as if the Almighty was protecting me.

The only thing that could occupy me and calm me down was drawing. At that time, paper was expensive, so I simply took some chalk, went out into the courtyard and drew on the pavements. The passers-by tried not to step on my "pictures". If anybody did accidentally do that, I would curse them despairingly. Seeing how keen I was on drawing, my parents took me to the Yuri Gagarin House of Pioneers where I studied in the fourth class. I recall that one day the teacher gave us drawing albums and Chinese brushes which cost 50 kopecks. My parents needed to send the money for them. At that time, we lived from hand to mouth, and my mother admitted that she did not have the money and I had to take it all back.

I was afraid to admit to her that I had already managed to draw on the whole album and to use the brush. A few days later, the teacher herself understood what had happened. "We'll regard the album and the brush as my present to you," she told me. She knew how much I loved to draw… Even now I still remember that brush bearing the number 16. I attended a drawing club for three years, but then I was attracted to what was going on outside in the street and gave up drawing. I began to do sport, became involved in football and wrestling. I lived on one of the most crime-ridden streets in Baku, Lev Tolstoy Street where only its own rules and regulations prevailed. We grew up to be little hooligans, and the adults could not cope with us.

- When did your "time on the streets" finish?

- In the 8th class, with my intolerable character, I drove the headmistress and a truly splendid teacher Sona xanim [expression of respect when addressing women in Azerbaijan] to summon my mother and ask her to move me to another school. "He is simply unmanageable! We do not know what to do about him anymore," the headmistress tried to explain to my mother. My mother begged her to let me complete the year, stating that, after the 8th class, I was going to go to the art school. "That bandit, in an art school?" the headmistress was amazed, but did not expel me from the school. To everyone's surprise, immediately I had finished the 8th class, I managed to enrol at the Azim Azimzada Art School at the first attempt. Those were probably the best years of my life. Every time I recall my drawing and painting teachers and the school's director, Eyyub Mammadov, with immense gratitude.

- How did your career go on to pan out?

After the art school, I served in the army. Then in 1978 I started to work at the restoration centre of the Mustafayev Art Museum. From there I was seconded to the Grabar Art Restoration Centre in Moscow. In restoring paintings, I learned the artists' secrets and their painting technique. In the Soviet years, I took up any work that came along: I drew propaganda posters with pictures of Lenin and the slogans "Hurrah for the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]", made copies of Rubens and designs for a textile factory. At that time, you had to have higher education in art in order to exhibit and sell your works in the art salons. I tried to enrol in the ceramics department at the Institute of Arts, where my middle brother was studying, but, alas, I was rejected. I was 34 years old at that time, and institutions of higher education would only take you up to the age of 35 years. So I did not manage to do it.

In the mid-1980s artists were permitted to exhibit their works on the streets. I began to paint studies of Baku's Old City, which sold quite well and I took up art seriously. Then the bad times of the 1990s began: the crisis, the instability and the long queues outside the shops. Everyone did what they could to survive. I not only needed to think about myself, but about my family too. The situation in Baku was a complicated one, so I decided to test fate and set out for Russia's cultural capital, St. Petersburg, with my wife and two children.

We stopped in the small picturesque little town of Pavlovsk in the environs of Moscow. Having settled my family in, I set out for St. Petersburg "to have a recce". I saw dozens of artists on Nevskiy Prospect, who had arrived from the republics of the former USSR to make "easy money". To work on Nevsky Prospect all you needed was two aluminium folding chairs, an easel, paper and a pencils, which I immediately purchased at the nearby "Gostinyy Dvor" department store. So, that's how I started to draw on Nevsky Prospect and hone my rapid drawing technique. I went on to exhibit my drawings [of the works] of great artists in the nearby art salon, which sold "like hot cakes". Then I got the idea of offering my still lifes, which I painted at home every day.

 In those parts, the still lifes looked very bright and eastern: the scarlet pomegranates, the peaches, quinces and persimmons… Then I decided to experiment and exhibit several of my pictures of Icheri Sheher. The first customer was the outstanding actor Kirill Lavrov, who, after looking at my studies attentively, exclaimed, "The Caucasus, Baku!". He bought one landscape for himself. Then I decided to move to nearby Moscow with my family, where the owner of the biggest pharmaceutical company, at that time a deputy, Vladimir Bryntsalov, purchased several of my works. One of my still lifes is in the private collection of [Spanish operatic soprano] Monserrat Caballe; Iosif Kobzon acquired it for the famous opera singer. My works are also in the private collection of the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi. Then it turned out that my first solo exhibition took place in Paris in 1994, and then in [the French city of] Cherbourg, in Switzerland and in the USA, and then I had four solo exhibitions in Moscow.

- But, nevertheless, you returned to Baku. Why?

-. Because in chilly Moscow I missed the warmth and colours of my native Baku.

- The flowers and fruits in your works often appear to glow from the inside: how do you achieve this effect? Do you use a special technique or is the object brought to life by the brush owing to lengthy personal contact with the subject being depicted?

 - I do not have any particular secrets. I simply try to bring the subject to life. What is more, flowers are very difficult to paint because they are constantly changing their shape. Peonies, irises and lilies in bud are the fastest to bloom. Incidentally, when I am painting flowers, it is as if they are frozen in time. It happened a few times that I brought in a bouquet, which I painted over several days, and the petals did not fall off, as if they were waiting for me to make the last brush stroke on the canvas. I really love to paint lilac. None of the artists has painted lilac in detail, petal by petal, but just with brush strokes.

- You have had an incredibly interesting life. You were not afraid to make changes and were constantly moving forward…

- I have been fortunate to see and have contact with many well-known personalities such as Sattar Bahlulzada, Alis Lambaranski, Togrul Narimanbayov, Bahram Mansurov, Iosif Kobzon, the soloist from the Supermax group, Kurt Hauenstein, Kirill Lavrov, the Russian actor Alexander Pashutin, Vladimir Bryntsalov and many others. For me constant movement means living, not passively sitting on the side-lines, but racing along, moving forwards. And every time I tell myself "Run, Rafiq, Run!" So, I go on living…