The daughter of Soviet Khirgizia
Soviet stamp depicting Chuikov's famous painting
Today, January 31st, is Inspire Your Heart With Art Day.
Last year I took the opportunity to write a postcard about the Museum of Fine Arts here in Bishkek. As it happens, yesterday saw one of the news agencies, (K-News), launched a new series of articles dedicated to telling the stories of famous pictures stored in the museum. I would like to think that they had deliberately chosen to do so now because of it’s designation, but I suspect that it’s just another example of serendipity.
To launch the series they chose to write an article about the painting The Daughter of Soviet Khirgizia by the famous Kyrgyz artist Semen Chuikov, which they described as “one of the most important paintings in the history of Kyrgyzstan”.
Chuikov is known as the “founder of Kyrgyz painting” and the “father of Kyrgyz Art”. He studied in Almaty and Tashkent before returning to Frunze, (as Bishkek was then called), and eventually moved to Moscow where he exhibited his first paintings in 1927. Returning home once more, he was one of the founders of the Kyrgyz Union of Artists and one of the forces behind the creation of the Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1948 he painted a picture depicting a rural dark tanned girl, with books in her hand, (on her way to school), wearing a modest dress and jacket and a red scarf similar to a pioneer’s neckerchief as a headscarf, set against bright blue sky, with mountains in the distance rising above the Central Asian steppe.
Chuikov made preparatory sketches of many village girls in different poses and we know that the model for the final picture was a girl called Aimzhamal Ogobaeva from the village of Orto Sai … but the picture was meant to be a generalized depiction of Kyrgyz youth, a collective image presented as a symbol of freedom and confidence of the Soviet people of Kyrgyzstan. It was part of a series called the Kyrgyz Kolhoz Suite, (Kolhoz is the Russian term for Collective farm).
The painting, (executed in oil on pasteboard and measuring 47.5 by 31.5cms, with the artist’s signature in the bottom left hand corner), was snapped up by the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow … almost before the paint was dry. A couple of years later, he painted a second copy for the Museum that he had helped to create here in his home town. It is supposed to be an exact copy – down to the finest detail.
It is one of two paintings from the Kolhoz Suite which is in the Bishkek Museum’s collection, alone with about 90 other works donated by the artist including a variety of small sketches which date from 1917-1919.
The Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia by Semen Chuikov
In 1974 the Soviet post office issued a stamp depicting the famous painting.
There’s a museum dedicated to Chuikov in Bishkek with another version of the same subject.
A version which portrayed the girl with a basket of apples, rather than carrying books, (and which had been in a private collection since having been purchased from the artist), was sold at Auction in Moscow in 2007. The Sale was entitled “A half century of Soviet Art” and featured works by notable Soviet artists.
Although many of the paintings eventually attracted higher prices than Chuikov’s “Daughter”, several of them did not reach their original estimates. Chuikov’s “Daughter” on the other hand far exceeded the estimated price of USD25000 with bidding quickly rising from the USD15000 starting price to an eventual USD85000 – making it, not only the “star of the show” but also, probably, the most expensive Kyrgyz painting of all time.
Something the article forgot to mention.
Bishkek