PAINTING MUSEUM: RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION – ASHRAF MURAD LOVE AND PROTEST

VIRTUAL TOUR

YARAT Contemporary Art Space is presenting the first major museum exhibition of Azerbaijani nonconformist artist Ashraf Murad. Composed of both private and public collections from Azerbaijan and abroad, the exhibition will be held at the Museum of Azerbaijani Painting of the XX-XXI Centuries. Many works are being presented to the general public for the first time. Covering the full breadth of his oeuvre, with over 100 multidisciplinary works, the exhibition features paintings, drawings, sketches and album drawings, as well as photographs and contextual materials.

Beginning from the mid – 1960s and concluding with Ashraf Murad’s death in 1979, the exhibition reveals him as a beautiful realist painter and sensitive interpreter of the evolving political climate. After its establishment in 1934, Socialist Realism became a stifling paradigm in which all-political critique and obvious formal experiments were snuffed out. All institutions were consumed by it, revealing a new ideology and forcibly creating a huge audience. The light wind of political change blew after Stalin’s death and brought to the Soviet Republics a greater acquaintance with the developing avant-garde and modernist practices of the West, which played an influential role in coming events...

After a tragic life event which happened to Ashraf Murad in the early 1960s, he fundamentally changed his painting style, building compositions, focus and subject matter. Narrative paintings, relevant to the regime and littered with light became melancholic and dramatic. His bright pallet transformed into dark, compositions became laconic, monumental, generalised and hyperbolised, according to the canvas dimensions. Murad reflected the dark side of Soviet life, highlighting his defiance against the repressive dogma of Socialist Realism that was imposed on him. His sporting figures, still-lifes and portraits of regime leaders belonged to Soviet topics, but were not at all Soviet. Ashraf’s subjects with hidden meanings were protests of ideology, the regime and its foundations. 

Ashraf Murad’s contribution to art development established him as one of Azerbaijan’s most significant artists of the twentieth century and made him into an inspiration for the next generations of artists. He was never officially recognised during his lifetime, his first posthumous exhibition being held not until 1984.

Ashraf Murad (b. 1925, Baku, Azerbaijan) after graduating from A.Azimzadeh Art College in Baku (1946) and I. E. Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1954) he came back to Baku where he lived and worked. His works are held in the Azerbaijan State Museum of Art, the National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and Nar Gallery, as well as in the private collections of Farhad Akhmedov, Farhad Khalilov, Rashad Babayev and Khayyam Mirzazadeh.

Curator: Farah Alakbarli

Notes for editors: 

Exhibition: Ashraf Murad: Love and Protest. Retrospective exhibition

Location: Museum of Azerbaijani Painting of the XX-XXI Centuries

Bayil District / National Flag Square, Baku, Azerbaijan 

Dates: 16 March – 23 August, 2019 

Exhibition open: Tuesday through Sunday, from 12:00 until 20:00. 

Admission is free 

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For media and image enquiries, please contact:  

Hokuma Karimova 

Telephone: +994 50 274 6747 

Email: hokuma.k@yarat.az