The painter who depicted the severity of Soviet life: Tair Salakhov
When Nikita Kruschev eased the great oppressions of Stalinism, one name to come in from the cold was Tair Salakhov.
Tair Salakhov created his artworks based on a figurative realist character and his works possessed none of the romanticization of working life in the Soviet Union required of artists during that period. Having trained at the Azimzade Art College in Baku and then the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow, during the 1950s Salakhov was the leading mastermind of the so-called 'severe style' which showed workers and industry of that era in gritty realism.
For one of his series of works, the artist spent three months in Neft Dashlari, a settlement built in the open sea off the coast of Baku, and the site of the world's first oil rigs. One of his famous works After Watch (1957) depicts several workers negotiating a wooden jetty, ice-looking waves lashing at their feet.
In 1960, Salakhov produced one of his most prominent works To You, Humankind!, which shows two figures flying through space, each holding forth great burning orbs. It was first displayed at the Azerbaijan Republican Exhibition in Baku in 1961. In later decades, Salakhov became best known for his portraits, as well as his scenes of urban life. Though they were frequently authorized and promoted the great and the good Soviet politics and society, he refused to give in to self-admiration: Portrait of Composer Fikret Amirov (1967) saw the winner of the Stalin Prize sat on a bed, brooding and downbeat. In Portrait of Rasul Rza, the poet looks haunted, as does composer Dmitry Shostakovich, in a 1974 portrait. Both men suffered under Stalin, and critics have suggested that the works bring out the tragedy of Salakhov's own life: in 1937 his father was arrested and executed.
Salakhov said that among those making art at the time, "There was a strong undercurrent of opposition though few dared to express it openly". His own work was a careful negotiation of that political situation. Art historian Alexander Rozhin claimed:
Despite the indistinct criticism of the regime that can be spotted in his paintings- if one examines them carefully- during his lifetime Salakhov received a good deal of state recognition including the Order of Lenin (1989), Order of the October Revolution (1976), People's Artist of the USSR (1973) and the USSR State Prize in 1968 for his portrait of composer Gara Garayev.
As Perestroika, the political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union unfolded in the 1980s, Salakhov played an instrumental role in facilitating exhibitions by Western artists previously shut out of the USSR, such as Francis Bacon and Robert Rauschenberg. Today, in Baku, the artist's former home and the studio have become a museum.
References:
https://artreview.com/tair-salakhov-painter-who-showed-the-severity-of-soviet-life-1928-2021/