An exhibition of works by Turkmen artists celebrating the challenging labor of rural workers has been unveiled at the State Museum of Fine Arts for the harvest festival. The dominant genre is still life paintings depicting juicy and appetizing fruits and berries. Beautifully arranged fruits and vegetables contrast in color with each other, creating a vibrant and cheerful palette.
Three still life paintings by Merdan Kakabaev are presented for the first time at the exhibition. They are distinguished by pure colors without mixing with other colors to achieve naturalness. Merdan Kakabaev's still lifes are somewhat decorative, but this is precisely what makes them unique.
Two original ceramic installations by Charyyar Durdyev also adorn the exhibition. Charyyar created them in the form of dishes, presenting the fruits in cross-section, which allowed him to show the seeds inside. An interesting feature was a bunch of grapes, with berries represented as purple rings.
The second most common theme after still life that attracts Turkmen artists is cotton farming.
Berdi Muhammetmyradov's work "Cotton Pickers" stands out among these paintings. The artist presented to the viewers three young women engaged in machine cotton picking.
His heroines have technical education and differ significantly from the girls who pick cotton by hand. The artist depicted them somewhat monumentally with a touch of decorativeness. There is something in common between this painting and Ivan Myagkov's work "Cotton Picking".
An interesting painting is "Sheep Breeding" by Yarly Bayramov. The people's artist saw a flock of sheep in the shape of an angle and depicted the painting in two shades of brown: the sheep in light brown and the earth in dark brown.
Thus, the pasture unexpectedly got a geometric appearance.
Nikolai Chervyakov used an unusual detail in his painting "Harman" - the shadow of men in the background, which crosses the entire painting diagonally. The painting "Sowing" by the same artist is also successful. The painting very accurately conveys a working moment of one of the important processes in agriculture.
Annasapar Amanmuhammedov's painting "Apple Picking" keeps visitors lingering. The green-red palette of the painting on one hand is vibrant, and on the other hand, it keeps the depicted girls in the garden within the color scheme. Acquaintance with many paintings at the exhibition became educational and pleasant for visitors.