Alakbar Rezaguliyev
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Alakbar Rezaguliyev (31 January 1903 in
Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
,
Baku Governorate The Baku Governorate, known before 1859 as the Shemakha Governorate, was a province ('' guberniya'') of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire, with its center in the booming metropolis and Caspian Sea port of Baku. Area (1897): 34,400 sq ...
– 31 January 1974 in
Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
) (alternative spelling: Alekper Rzaguliyev) ( az, Ələkbər Rzaquliyev; russian: Алекпер Рзакулиев) was an Azerbaijani artist. He was awarded the title
Honored Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR Honored Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR (; ) was an honorary title awarded by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (Azerbaijan SSR) and was one of the forms of recognition by the state and society of the mer ...
(1964).


Early life

Alakbar was born in
Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
, into the large family of a small businessman-shopkeeper. Although there were no artists in his family, Rezaguliyev showed artistic talent at an early age. He studied at Moscow Technical Art College from 1925 to 1928."Art As Memory, Alakbar Rezaguliyev's Prints of Azerbaijan"
by Jean Patterson, in Azerbaijan International (Autumn 2002), Vol. 10:3, pp. 32-37 After graduation, he returned to Baku.


Years in exile

Alakbar was among the first to be arrested in what would later be termed as Stalin's Repression, in which 70,000 Azerbaijanis were executed or exiled along with hundreds of thousands of other citizens throughout the USSR. His friend was accused of advocating "pan-Turkish ideas," and Alakbar was deemed guilty by mere association. When Alakbar was thrown into prison, he didn't even know what he was being accused of or why. Altogether, Alakbar spent more than 23 years of his life in exile.Street Scenes from Yesteryear, The Prints of Alakbar Rezaguliyev
in Azerbaijan International (Summer 2000), Vol. 8:2, pp. 16-17.
He was sentenced to six years. After being released, he returned and married Sona Huseynova in 1935; the couple had two daughters, Adila and Sevil. He and Sona later divorced. On November 3, 1937, again Alakbar was arrested. He told his fellow artist
Rasim Babayev Rasim Babayev ( az, Rasim Hənifə oğlu Babayev; 31 December 1927 – 24 April 2007) was a painter, Honored Art Worker and People's Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR. Biography Rasim Babayev was born in Baku, in 1927. He studied at Painting School n ...
how it happened: "One day I was walking down Komsomolskaya Street when I ran into
Ruhulla Akhundov Ruhulla Akhundov ( az, Руһулла Әли оғлу Ахундов, italic=no, Ruhulla Əli oğlu Axundov; 1 January 1897, in Shuvalan, Baku Governorate, Russian Empire – 21 April 1938) was an Azerbaijani Soviet politician, publisher and journa ...
(one of the Bolsheviks who helped establish the Soviet system in Azerbaijan). "Ruhulla looked annoyed at seeing me and remarked rudely: 'Hey, you dumb guy, are you back here again?' And with those words, I was sent directly back to prison" - this time, to Siberia and later on to Solovki, an island in the Arctic where there are monasteries. Alakbar would go on to do a series of paintings depicting the isolation of those years there. During his exile, Alakbar married a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
girl named Berta, who had been sent to Siberia from a German settlement in the
Saratov Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901,36 ...
Autonomous Region. When World War II broke out, Joseph Stalin had exiled all Germans living in the Soviet Union. Alakbar and Berta had two sons, Ogtay and Aydin, and a daughter, Sevda.


After Exile

After Stalin died in 1953, tens of thousands of prisoners were released from prison. Alakbar, too, was among those who eventually were able to return to Azerbaijan. The exile greatly affected his personality. He became very serious and morally broken. It even affected his creative activity. He very seldom used colors after returning home. The harsh experiences of imprisonment that he had suffered for more than two decades, after all, had been his fate merely through association and not based on any crime that he had ever committed himself.


References


External links

*To view works of Rezaguliyev, visi
AZgallery.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rezaguliyev, Alakbar Soviet painters 1974 deaths 1903 births Artists from Baku 20th-century Azerbaijani painters