Portrait of the composer Kara Karaev

“Portrait of the composer Kara Karaev ” ( azerb. Bəstəkar Qara Qarayevin portreti ) ^[1] - a painting by Tayr Salahov , an Azerbaijani Soviet painter, people's artist of the USSR, painted in 1960 . It is stored in Moscow , in the State Tretyakov Gallery ^[2] . The painting depicts the famous Soviet Azerbaijani composer, People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor Kara Karaev .

Tahir Salahov

Portrait of the composer Kara Karaev . 1960

azerb. Bəstəkar Qara Qarayevin portreti

oil on canvas . 121 × 203 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery , Moscow

In 1962, Salakhov was awarded the silver medal of the USSR Academy of Arts ^[1] for his “Portrait of the Composer Kara Karaev”, and in 1968 he was awarded the USSR State Prize ^[3] .

In the portrait, the composer Kara Karaev sits, grouped, as for a tiger jump, writes art critic and critic Ekaterina Destot . He is wearing a turtleneck and something like a Soviet analogue of jeans . Realistic portrait, written entirely from nature. Kara Karaev is sitting on a kind of hard stool. As the Destiny notes, Karaev “is difficult, He is working before our eyes.” But it works while sitting. And he does not drum on the keys in a state of ecstasy, but thinks intensely, and there are books on the piano. He is not a “creator”, but a kind of conscious “operator” of his own creativity, like a computer operator (then a fashionable profession) or even a drill rig repairman (who, we note, doesn’t repair anything at Salakhov, but plans to repair it strategically). His work has an intellectual and technical component ” ^[4] .

According to Dyogot, for the Soviet Union in the first post-Stalin years, such an image of people was a revolutionary idea, since it rehabilitated the intelligentsia with all its almost inevitable (then) cosmopolitanism , embodied in every (then) intelligible symbol - a defiantly white turtleneck of Kara-Karaev (Salakhov himself made him put it on) ^[4] .