Draft:Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia

Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia
File:Дочь Советской Киргизии.jpg
Artist	Simion Chuykov
Year	1948
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	120 cm × 95,5 cm (47 in × 376 in)
Location	State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia (Russian: Дочь Советской Киргизии) is a painting by Soviet artist Simion Chuykov. It is the final canvas of the serie Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite (1939-1948), according to the author's plan, reflecting the changes in the life of Soviet Kyrgyzstan that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s. Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia, according to art historians, plays a central role in this serie.

The painting is part of the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Today it can be seen in the permanent exhibition of one of the Soviet painting halls of the New Tretyakov Gallery. The author's reproductions of the painting belong to the Gapar Aitiev Museum of Fine Arts in Bishkek and the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest.

The painting has repeatedly represented Soviet fine art at major exhibitions outside the USSR and the Russian Federation. At the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia was awarded a gold medal (along with another of the artist's paintings, Daughter of Shepherd).

The painting's representation

A "sturdy, tanned girl" walks across the steppes of her native Kirgizia (contemporary art historian Jamal Umetalieva wrote of the slow, confident rhythm of the movement). Above her head is a high dome of blue sky, and purple mountains are visible on the horizon. The girl is wearing a light-colored dress, a blue velvet sleeveless shirt, and a red kerchief. The sleeveless shirt casts blue reflections on the dress. The girl's face is calm, full of majesty and warmth at the same time, reflecting strict classical ideas of beauty. Black plaits frame the girl's face with a high forehead. They fall down her back from under her headscarf.

The girl's silhouette stands out in relief against the landscape. The color emphasizes the heroine's unity with her native nature: the blue of the air thickens in the bright blue of the heroine's blouse. The artist used a wide range of blues, reds and ochres and their various subtle combinations and proportions. The sun illuminates the girl's figure, her swarthy face and hands as well as the vast expanse of steppe on which she walks.

Painting's history

Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia was painted in 1948. It is the final canvas in the serie Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite, which was begun in 1939 (the artist interrupted work on the serie during the World War II). Candidate of Art History Galina Leontieva, who devoted a separate large article to the painting, referred to it as a culmination of the artist's entire serie, “a symbol of the free East, awakened to an active, independent life”. In her opinion, the painting conveys “the image of a new man, his emerging character, the features of modern life in Kyrgyzstan...in the most concentrated, concise, and expressive form”.

According to the Soviet art historian Elena Zhidkova, the artist's intentions originally included five main themes (or canvases) of the series Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite: Song, Morning, Noon, Evening, Youth (this was the title originally conceived by the artist for the future painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan). The environment was to be landscapes and sketches of the artist's everyday impressions. In the series Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite, sketches, genre paintings (according to academician Dmitry Sarabyanov, they can be considered as such only conditionally, as they do not depict a specific event and do not contain action), and landscapes coexist. Each painting can be simultaneously perceived as an independent artistic work. As noted by a contemporary historian of fine art, many paintings of this serie had quite everyday names — Morning, Noon, Evening — and were sketches of everyday life in Kyrgyz villages, and “to the practice of collective farm production had no more relation than Van Gogh’s The Red Vineyards in Arles or Vasnetsov's reapers”. Soviet art historian Anatoly Bogdanov wrote that the title of the serie, however, was chosen consciously by the artist: he did not depict the dynamics of labor activity, but poetically interpreted its results. The paintings of the serie create a broad panorama of life in the Soviet Republic, but in content and pictorial tasks they are different. This, according to Bogdanov, was due to the great importance of landscape in the paintings of the serie — nature does not suppress man, but is in unity with the way of life, customs, and traditions of the people.

The original painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan is currently in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Its technique is oil painting on canvas, and its size is 120 × 95.5 cm (according to the Soviet art historian Evelina Polishchuk, 120 × 95 cm). At the bottom left is the artist's signature and the date of the canvas's creation: S. Chuykov 1948. The painting was acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery from the artist himself in 1949.

Chuykov created the picture in the suburbs of the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Frunze (now Bishkek). The final stage of the work took place in the artist's studio, where now there is the Memorial House Museum of S.A. Chuykov (the charcoal portrait of Aizhamal Ogobaeva, who was the model for the painting, is in the exposition of the House Museum). The artist's goal was to create a collective image of a man of the new society. It is believed that this time he did not create a large number of sketches for the canvas in the form of sketches and studies, although it is careful, painstaking work on sketches, sketches, composition was a feature of the creative method Chuykov.26 Preparatory works for this painting, according to art historians, were considered by the artist to be the paintings created in different years that depict Kyrgyz teenage girls: Girl with Cotton (1936), Girl with Sunflower (1939), and Girl with Book (1946). Galina Leontieva explained this by stating that he worked for many years to create a “generalized, typical image”. The above paintings from different years, in her view, are milestones on the way to creating the image of the girl from the canvas Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Each of these paintings contains features that would be brought together in this final canvas. At the same time, Chuykov did not limit himself to a simple repetition of what he had already found. In each new painting, he honed the character of his heroine, “making it deeper and more multifaceted”.

Art historians note that one of the characteristic features of Chuykov's work is the transfer of a single image from painting to painting, while perfecting it, polishing it, and making it more multifaceted until it is complete. One of the few known sketches for the painting is in the collection of the Perm State Art Gallery. Another sketch is mentioned in the catalog of the artist's works by Dmitry Sarabyanov. It is executed in oil on cardboard, with a size of 34 × 26 cm. This study is in the collection of the Bulgarian National Art Gallery in Sofia. Another sketch for the painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia, made in 1948, is listed on the website of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (Goskatalog number 4071982). It is done in oil on cardboard, with a size of 33 × 25 cm. The sketch is part of the collection of the Bryansk Regional Art Museum and Exhibition Center (inv. Zh 847), and is kept in its archives. In the summer of 2007, as part of a project in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts, the museum presented the sketch to a wide audience at one of the exhibitions of the serie The 20th Century through the Eyes of the Artist.

Chuykov himself was very fond of the painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Tatiana Popova, head of the painting department at the Gapar Aitiev Museum of Fine Arts, believes that for the artist, it was a symbol of the renewed life of the Kyrgyz people. In this painting, Chuykov presented his understanding of a new hero, a new man of his homeland[4], the personification of Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

The author's repetitions of the painting

External images
| A study to the painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia, Bryansk Regional Art Museum and Exhibition Center, 1948 [1]
| Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Gapar Aitiev National Museum of Art, 1950 (author's reprint) [2]

For the Gapar Aitiev National Museum of Art the artist made an author's copy in 1950 (its dimensions are also 120 × 95.5 cm). At present this painting is exhibited in the Simion Chuykov Hall of the same museum.

Another author's repetition of the painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgizia by Simion Chuykov, created for the National Museum of Art of Romania in Budapest. The technique is oil painting on canvas, size: 120 × 95 cm. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Dmitry Sarabyanov in a monograph on the artist's work mentions this canvas twice, but does not date the time of its execution by the artist. In the catalogue of Elena Zhidkova the creation of this author's repetition is dated to 1951.

In December 2006, Kommersant Weekend magazine reported on another author's version of the painting, which was offered at the "Half a Century of Soviet Art" auction in Moscow. Kommersant Weekend referred to the canvas as "the famous girl with books". The information was published that at the established preauction price of 16-20 thousand dollars, after a long rivalry between the buyer, who was present in the hall, and his opponent, who communicated with the auction staff by phone, the price rose to 85 thousand dollars. However, if you go to the official website of the SovCom auction, you can find there as lot number 45 a completely different painting with the same title Daughter of Soviet Kyrgizia. It is from the 1940s, has a small format (47.5 × 31.5 cm), and is made in the technique of oil painting on cardboard. The painting depicts a young woman smiling at the viewer, carrying on her left shoulder a basket filled to the brim with fruit. The catalog of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis (USA), published in 2006, mentions a version of Chuykov's painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia (canvas, oil, 47 × 37 cm) made by the author. It came here from a private collection (when this happened is not indicated in the catalog). The date of creation of this version of the painting is given in the catalog as 1950.

Acknowledgment and awards

The Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite was dedicated to Simion Chuykov's personal exhibition in Moscow in 1948. The serie (in the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On Awarding Stalin Prizes for Outstanding Works in the Field of Art and Literature for 1948" it was called A Series of Paintings on the Collective Farms of Kyrgyzstan), which included the painting, was awarded the Stalin Prize of the second degree for 1948 (the artist received a large sum of money for that time in the amount of 50,000 rubles). Art critics and viewers immediately singled out Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia from the artist's serie of paintings. They noted the beauty of the picture and the artistic skill of its execution.

The painting was repeatedly represented Soviet art at foreign exhibitions. It was presented in the German Democratic Republic (in the cities of Berlin and Dresden) at the exhibition of six academicians of the Academy of Arts of the USSR: Alexander Deineka, Nikolai Tomsky, Alexei Pakhomov, Georgy Vereisky, Geliy Korzhev and Simion Chuykov. In January 1965, the German newspaper Sächsische Zeitung wrote: "Chuykov is an exceptional painter... he vividly conveys the beauty of his homeland, the feelings and thoughts of the people he depicts... His people are full of peace, their charm of immediacy is so faithfully captured and reproduced that, for example, the painting 'Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan' has become the personification of Soviet youth and its affirmation of life".

At the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, two of the artist's paintings, Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia and Shepherd's Daughter, were awarded the gold medal. Art historians noted that the paintings complement each other — in the painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia, Chuykov synthesizes socially significant features of the model, and in Shepherd's Daughter Chuykov "combines with deep generalization directly emotional impression of nature".

The model

In numerous Chuykov's sketches, his attention was drawn to the image of three Kyrgyz girls. The face of one of them, “full of inner concentration, lively mind, and beautiful in its own way, especially attracted the artist's attention.” He was interested not so much in the girl's appearance as in the possibilities that her “peculiar external and spiritual appearance” provided for the creation of a long-planned painting dedicated to Kyrgyz youth and completing the cycle.

As a model for the artist worked a Kyrgyz girl from the village of Orto-Say, whose name was Aizhamal Ogobaeva (Kyrgyz art historian Jamal Umetalieva believed that the artist did not strive for portrait likeness and significantly departed from the girl's true appearance, making the image deeply national). A close relative of Aizhamal —Talant Ogobayev— who later became an artist himself, wrote that when Chuykov created his painting, the girl was 13 or 14 years old. The artist befriended Aizhamal and offered to take her with him to Moscow to get a good education. However, the girl's mother opposed this and did not allow her to leave. Talant Ogobayev believed this was a wrong decision, as the girl missed a rare opportunity to significantly change her fate.

Aizhamal married her fellow villager Kamchybek Ogobayev. During World War II, Kamchybek Ogobayev took part in military operations against Japan as a cavalryman. After the war and demobilization, he worked as a gamekeeper in the Issyk-Ata reserve. Later, Kamchybek Ogobayev worked as a watchman for the collective farm herd. Aizhamal Ogobaeva dedicated herself to her family, did household chores, and raised her children. She had four children; one of her daughters died quite early, but the other three lived long lives. Aizhamal herself died at around seventy. Chuykov maintained a friendly relationship with her for the rest of his life, often referring to her as “his daughter”.

Elena Zhidkova wrote in a monograph about the artist that he highlighted the features characteristic of his model, but she “did not become for him the only muse”. The image of the girl, according to the art historian, included “the artist's personal idea of the ideal” and the features of many other models. Therefore, the image is synthetic. Soviet art historian and senior research associate of the Tretyakov Gallery Evelina Polishchuk argued that the artist's task in creating the picture did not include psychological analysis or the transfer of portrait likeness. According to her, the heroine on Chuykov's canvas is an image-metaphor and functionally is close to Vera Mukhina's sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, a generalized national image personifying the aspiration toward the light of knowledge and a new life. Anatoly Bogdanov expressed a similar opinion. In his view, the first paintings of the Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite are dominated by images of specific people with their individual appearances, so they can be considered portraits, although even in these, the artist emphasizes the most typical features that reflect the signs of the time. In the paintings of the late 1940s, he emphasized active purposefulness and willfulness, giving the canvases a civic orientation. In the painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, according to Bogdanov, Chuykov "achieved the unity of the individual and the typical, creating a magnificent portrait of a Kyrgyz schoolgirl in all the uniqueness of her human personality and inspired a poetic story about youth, happiness, and the generation of the young". For Polikarp Lebedev, corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR and long-time director of the Tretyakov Gallery, the girl in the painting is, in general, "a collective image of a Soviet person moving toward the bright goal — communism" and "a collective image that poetically celebrates the people of the 'small' nationalities of our motherland, liberated by the October Revolution".

Artistic features and the artist's intention

The painting Daughter of Soviet Kirghizia was recommended during Soviet times as a visual aid in a high school history course to “reveal the enormous changes in the lives of the previously oppressed peoples of tsarist Russia”.

Soviet art historians and cultural researchers of the 1950s-1960s about the painting

Landscape of Chui Valley (looking north). Photo, 2007

Dr. Andrey Chegodaev, Doctor of Art History, in a book on the artist's work published in 1952, quoting Chuykov himself, called the painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia “an embodiment of the spiritual and cultural growth of the Kyrgyz people” and “one of the most vivid expressions of socialist realism in Soviet painting”. He emphasized the clarity and simplicity of the image of the girl, which, in his view, also conveyed a monumental and epic quality. He noted that in this painting, the artist abandoned his favored “muted and restrained shades” in favor of “deep and ringing colors”. The painting, in his opinion, became the centerpiece for the audience in the cycle Kyrgyzia Collective Farm Suite.

Elena Zhidkova saw in the painting “the romance of irresistible forward movement”, similar to the image of the “broad step” of the characters in Vera Mukhina's sculptural group Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (in Chuykov's painting, the girl is depicted only at the knee). The energy and laconism of the painting make it unforgettable for the viewer. Zhidkova wrote that the artist worked out the movement of the heroine many times at the stage of album sketches, depicting the head, figure, and gesture of the hand holding the book in either colored pencil or oil. The basis of the image is the plasticity of the form and its change under the influence of lighting. Color, according to Zhidkova, enriches this plasticity. The color solution of the canvas was not an end in itself; the artist's task was to express the “beauty of the ideal”. Nevertheless, he worked out every centimeter of the pictorial layer. Zhidkova especially emphasized the swarthy face and hands of the girl, as well as the combination of blue and light pink colors in her clothes, accurately observed by the artist in the national Kyrgyz costume. At the same time, Chuykov was sparing in the selection of details, which gave a clear and monumental simplicity to the image. According to the art historian, Daughter of Soviet Kirghizia, thanks to this approach, became “an embodiment of the dignity of the people and a symbol of the future”.

The depth of space, from Elena Zhidkova's perspective, is conveyed by the artist with the help of “air perspective” changing the color of the light-air environment that fills the typical landscape of Kyrgyzstan: a wide valley, smooth outlines of mountain ranges, and a high sky. Color and plastic diversity are subordinated to the task of revealing the ideological and emotional meaning.

Galina Leontieva wrote that for Simion Chuykov in the painting The Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, nature is inextricably linked with man: “the earth feeds man, man gives the earth his labor, affection, his love.” She believed that the artist depicted this connection “with the brilliance and perfection of mature skill.” Leontyeva noted the composition of the painting, its poetry, and the picturesque richness of the canvas. The art historian believed that it would have been much easier to reflect the problem that worried the artist in a plot canvas, where some event would allow for the depiction of a clash of characters. Simion Chuykov chose a single-figure composition. The only character creates the image of a “renewed, young, free country”. The artist himself wrote about it as follows: “Majestic expanses of valleys, flooded with a sea of light and air, vast pastures, and grandiose silhouettes of mountain ranges, in my opinion, harmonize with the image of a free man, the master of this nature”. Leontyeva wrote that the landscape in the painting lives through its “epic beginning”: wide dales, mountains shrouded in haze, and a high dome of sky. Nature on the canvas is “solemnly calm”. The artist did not depict external manifestations of nature: “rushing clouds, turbulent wind, sparkling lightning, or thunder showers.” Poetry for the artist is embedded in “everyday life”.

According to Leontyeva, the nuances of movement and the model's posture in the canvas become more important in a single-figure composition. Chuykov managed to find the correct position of the figure on the canvas plane, reflecting the internal logic of the composition and its connection with the concept of the canvas. The artist increased the distance from the edge of the canvas in front more than behind her. This ratio gave the painting a sense of forward movement. Correctly, in Leontyeva's opinion, the direction of the heroine's movement was found. If the artist had depicted the girl walking toward the viewer (in the front), it would have given the canvas a poster-like appearance and deprived the picture of the feeling of the vast expanses of Kyrgyzstan, which plays an important role “in the emotional structure” of the canvas. The artist built the composition of the painting “on monumental relations of large forms”.

By lowering the horizon line, the artist showed the girl's figure almost entirely against the blue sky. Because the viewer has to look at the girl as if from below, her fragile figure acquires monumentality. The feeling of monumentality is reinforced by the severity of the girl's silhouette against the sky. Simion Chuykov does not use external signs of romance, such as spectacular gestures or the beauty of facial features, to depict the heroine. On the contrary, he emphasized the girl's restraint and inner concentration, her firmness, quiet dignity, and determination. The “round, cheekbone, with deep-set eyes face of the heroine” is the most ordinary, “which thousands meet in the auls and nomads of the Kyrgyz region”. The combed hair reveals to the viewer “a high, clean forehead”.

Leontyeva noted Chuykov's use of a contrasting ratio of three primary colors: blue, red, and white. According to the art historian, it generates a sense of vigor and joy. Achieving harmony between these three colors, according to Leontyeva, was made possible by the “general warm tone” of the canvas: “the scene is as if shaken by the air shivering from the heat, and this light haze softens the outlines, mutes the ringing colors”. Lilac, silver, and nacre tones create “the richest gamut”. The light and shadow transitions used by the artist are picturesque. The combination of white, red, and blue in the painting was interpreted differently by Yulia Bolshakova. She wrote that this combination, along with the rich range of shades of the blue sky and sun-drenched landscape, gives the canvas a sense of romantic excitement. The figure of the girl in this case is “as if flying over the horizon”, but the laconism of the pose, “the lack of randomness in the features of the face", and the strict concentration of the heroine give the picture, according to the art historian, a monumental quality.

Soviet art historians and cultural researchers of the 1970s and 1980s about the painting

Candidate of Art History Anatoly Bogdanov noted in a sketch of the artist's work that the ideological capacity of the content corresponds to the artistic structure of the painting, primarily its composition: it “juxtaposes a scaled human figure with a landscape background, forming the background”. The vertical format of the painting also corresponds to the idea. It allows the artist to show the figure of the girl almost in full height. The low point from which the artist's gaze is directed at her emphasizes the monumentality and purposefulness of the heroine. The composition corresponds to the color solution: the bright red and blue of the heroine's clothes are contrasted with the soft pastel tones of the landscape (golden ears of the field, bluish mountains, pale blue sky). The confident and proud look of the girl corresponds to the colors that demonstrate vigor and the rise of vitality. The figure of the girl is painted with “dense, material brushstrokes”, while the landscape is free and light, characteristic of sketches.

Bogdanov noted the difference between two of the artist's famous paintings, The Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan and The Chaban's Daughter. Despite the common principles of composition, the different coloristic gamma conveys different concepts: in the first painting, the bright and energetic colors convey a sense of the heroine’s strong-willed character, while in the second, the converging and seemingly flowing tones create a mood of serenity.

Jamal Umetalieva, in her monograph on the development of Kyrgyz painting, echoed Leontyeva's conclusions about the colorism of the canvas. Complementing them, she wrote that the bright red color used by the artist enlivens the entire painting and “makes all the tones sound with the greatest force”. Chuykov builds the light and shade in the painting by changing the strength of light while preserving the colors' same quality. According to Umetalieva, Chuykov used shadow as a special artistic technique that gives the canvas “special beauty and color expressiveness”. The researcher especially emphasized the shadows on the edge of the girl's skirt, where the artist applied blue-violet paint, and the elusive colors used to convey the transitions of light — the heroine's clothes shimmer with silver, pearlescent, and blue-violet tones. From her point of view, color in the painting expresses “the poetry of life and the general mood” of festivity and joy. Umetalieva believed that the artist endowed the small canvas with the epic features.

Valentin Serov, By the Window

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Tatuli's Portrait (or A Girl with a Doll), 1937

Academician Dmitry Sarabyanov noted the artist's skill in using subtle transitions of color to create the volume and shape of the girl's body, the texture of her clothes, and the depth of space in the landscape opening up in the distant background. The concentration on the girl's face, according to the art historian, “can only be compared to the concentration of the artist himself, reverently touching the canvas, working out every smallest part of its surface”. Sarabyanov wrote that the artist did not fall into illusion and in no way deviated from the truth of life. For the art historian, the painting itself is “an emblem of the new life of the Kyrgyz people”.

Leonid Zinger, a Doctor of Art History, noted in his monograph on the development of Soviet portrait art that compositionally and in its color scheme, Chuykov's painting goes back to the works of Vasily Surikov, Valentin Serov, and Mikhail Vrubel. On the other hand, he found similarities between the canvas and early Soviet portrait types. The painting The Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan is linked to them by the generalization of the image, monumentality, heroic-romantic interpretation, and symbolism (the red revolutionary headscarf, the books symbolizing the striving for knowledge in her hand). From Zinger's point of view, the artist brought into this canvas a characteristic soulfulness, which was absent not only in portrait types but also in Chuykov's early works, including those from wartime. In a personal letter to Zinger, the artist wrote about the painting: “I strive to create a generalized, associative image; I want the image to speak not only about a particular event or a given person, but also about the people, their fate, and our time”.

Soviet art historians emphasized the girl's independence and energy, which is strikingly different from the position of women in pre-revolutionary Kirghizia: “Everything in her appearance —in her calm posture, in her unhurried step, in her clear face, drenched with a swarthy blush— shows that she feels herself the mistress of the land. Confidently looks forward the daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, whose people before the revolution were hampered, backward, and oppressed”. The painting reveals the new Soviet image of the Kyrgyz girl and of Soviet Kyrgyzstan itself. Art historians noted that this feeling is created by the composition of the painting (low horizon line) and the combination of colors (bright orange scarf, blue velvet jacket, swarthy complexion burned by the southern sun). Oleg Sopotsinsky, a Candidate of Art History, noted that in his paintings, Chuykov “does not show active action or sharp dramatic collisions but seeks to express the high ethical structure of ordinary Soviet people, their nobility, and the clarity of their view of the world”. The image of the heroine, from the perspective of the art historian, is characterized by integrity and significance; she is “the mistress of a great country, her life path is clear and straight”. Specializing in realistic art, Soviet art historian Lilia Bolshakova emphasized that the artist revealed a close relationship between man and the land that nurtured him, using bright decorative color to unite the landscape and the girl's costume into a single coloristic whole, showcasing the completeness and capacity of the content of the picture, as well as the poetic feeling embedded in the canvas.

Modern art historians and cultural researchers about the painting

USSR postage stamp, 1974, from the series Soviet Painting

Modern art historians note that The Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan was actively reproduced in Soviet times in printed publications, supporting the ideologically seasoned phrases about “the international feat of the Russian artist who devoted his talent to the life of the Kyrgyz people”. However, the painting itself does not allow speculation about official engagement or political conjuncture. In the magazine Kurak, art historian Sarman Akylbekov noted the artist's deep penetration into the Kyrgyz national character and his talent as a scenography designer: “The red shawl of the Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia and the blue sky above her are not only consonant with the Kyrgyz tradition of color combination in applied art: the artist, like a stage director, taking advantage of the natural sunlight, created an amazing mise-en-scène, in which the plastic figure of a spiritualized girl walking with books is the center of the artist's thoughts about the beautiful future of the nation”. The authors of the book Simion Afanasyevich Chuykov and His Epoch: 1902–1980, published in 2007, emphasize the realism of the painting: “There is no tendency and tension. A Kyrgyz girl got up early in the morning, washed her face, took a book, and went to study, and it is this combination of purity, simplicity, and greatness that became a symbol of a new life in a new country. This was true in life, and it became a true in art”.

The authors of the collective monograph Art Beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe, published in Leipzig in 2016, note that the composition of the painting is constructed in such a way that the figure of the heroine seems to be pushed into the sky, making her a monument of illusory freedom and a reminder of the destroyed past. At the same time, they perceive the figure of the girl on the canvas as somewhat indeterminate and unstable, as she stands emphatically alone against the background of the steppe, too neat and too proud of her status. From the authors' perspective, the painting demonstrates not so much the rapid movement of Soviet Kyrgyzstan on the path of progress as the penetration of the new socialist ideology into the minds of the young generation of Kyrgyz.

A contemporary Kyrgyz art historian writes about the painting:

When I first saw the painting The Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, I emphasized to myself the amazing similarity between me and the depicted girl: the same ruddy round cheeks, high forehead, swarthy skin, dark hair, also braided into thick braids, except that I didn't wear a headscarf. Later, as it turned out, many Kyrgyz girls thought that the Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan was drawn from them. I was even a little offended. But in this, perhaps, lies the clue to the magnetic attraction that one feels when looking at Chuykov's paintings. All of them are native: there is a sound of the lullaby motif, that our mothers sing to us, children's songs, and poems about the boundless beauty of our lands and people.

Aktanova notes that Chuykov portrayed ordinary people, their sincerity and directness. He avoided places attractive to tourists; many times coming to Issyk-Kul, he never painted the lake. The monumentality of the painting is created by the fact that the girl walks almost next to the viewer, who sees her clearly and very closely. She walks with bold and quick steps against the sky, giving the impression that she is rapidly passing by the viewer. Her determination is conveyed not by gestures but by her gaze. The girl, from the point of view of art historians, is not distinguished by exceptional beauty in the Eastern or European sense, but she conquers viewers with her restraint, inner confidence, and strong character. A slightly lowered horizon line allows the artist to show the figure of the girl with books in her hand almost entirely against the background of the sky and a chain of mountains. The viewer looks at the picture somewhat from below.

A parallel was drawn between the girl from Chuykov's painting and the female characters of writer Chingiz Aitmatov, a younger contemporary of Simion Chuykov.

Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia in culture

Modern Kyrgyz official media claim that the painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia is the most famous work of Kyrgyz fine art. In April 1950, a reproduction of the painting was placed on the last page of Ogonyok magazine, which had a circulation of 381,000. It became the basis for a postage stamp issued in 1974 in the series Soviet Painting (CFA № 4341, multicolor offset printing with varnish, coated paper, comb perforation, serration: 12 x 12 ½, design by artist I. Martynov, denomination — 20 kopecks, edition — 4,300,000). The stamps were sold in sheets of 18 stamps and 2 labels (4×5) and (5×4). The coupons were placed on the first and last place of the block. The reproductions of the painting were also published in a Russian language textbook for grades 5-6.

In 2015, the Russian Museum hosted an exhibition of paintings by the contemporary German neo-expressionist Georg Baselitz from the Albertina Gallery in Vienna. He showed Russian Paintings — a series that began in the late 1990s. The paintings in this serie are the artist's expressionist response to the most famous paintings of Soviet Socialist Realism. In addition to reinterpretations of Isaac Brodsky's Lenin at Smolny, Boris Ioganson's At the Old Ural Factory, and Fyodor Reshetnikov's Low Marks Again, the artist also created a painting based on the canvas Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia.

External image
| A Daughter of Soviet Kirghizia, a new version [3]

In 2014, Kyrgyz and international media reported that in Bishkek there was a presentation of an art composition made on the wall of the building of Gymnasium No. 12. The end of the building is now decorated with a modernized version of Simion Chuykov's painting Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. The painting depicts a girl with an iPad and white headphones associated with Apple. The work was funded by the U.S. Embassy and produced by a group of local artists in collaboration with an American artist. Sergei Keller, Dmitry Petrovsky, and Eugene Makshakov worked on the image. Local publisher and journalist Bektur Iskender said:

Sure, a tablet and headphones are incredibly mundane. But so be it. It's good that we can alter the sacred with impunity. I'm all for unfettered creativity. There should be nothing that makes us afraid to breathe. I want us in my country not to be afraid to make jokes... We will only be strong when we can treat any fact of our past with humor instead of wasting energy fighting windmills.

Bibliography

Sources

• Постановлении Совета Министров СССР «О присуждении Сталинских премий за выдающиеся работы в области искусства и литературы за 1948 год» [Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR On awarding Stalin prizes for outstanding works in the field of art and literature for 1948] (in Russian). Правда: Газета. 1949.
• Chuykov, S. A. (1963). Избранные произведения. Сопоцинский О. И. [Selected Works. Sopotsinsky O. I.] (in Russian). М.: Издательство Академии художеств СССР. p. 23.
• Chuykov, S. A. (1967). На пути к картине // Записки художника [On the way to the picture // The artist's notes] (in Russian). М.: Молодая гвардия. pp. 44–65.

Researches and non-fiction

• Aktanova, D. (2013). Дочь Советской Киргизии [Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan] (in Russian). #ONE: Журнал. pp. 78–80.
• Bogdanov, A. A. (1970). Семён Афанасьевич Чуйков [Simion Afanasievich Chuykov]. Народная библиотека по искусству (in Russian). Л.: Художник РСФСР. p. 59.
• Bolshakova, L. A. (1976). Государственная Третьяковская галерея [State Tretyakov Gallery] (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. p. 159.
• Bolshakova, Yu. B. (1972). Чуйков. Альбом [Chuykov. The Album] (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. p. 26.
• Whipper B. R.; Kaufmann R. S. (1964). Живопись // История русского искусства в 13-ти томах [Painting // History of Russian Art in 13 volumes] (in Russian). Vol. XIII. М.: Наука. pp. 164–222.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Volosovykh, S. B. (1957). Изобразительное искусство Киргизской ССР [Fine Art of the Kyrgyz SSR] (in Russian). М.: Советский художник. p. 24.
• Dyadyuchenko, L. B. (2003). Семён Чуйков: Документальная повесть [Semyon Chuikov: A documentary story]. Жизнь замечательных людей Кыргызстана (in Russian). ЖЗЛК. p. 276. ISBN 9967-21-861-4
• Zhidkova, E. V. (1964). «Киргизская колхозная сюита» // Семён Афанасьевич Чуйков [“Kirghiz Kolkhoz Suite” // Semyon Afanasyevich Chuikov] (in Russian). М.: Искусство. pp. 43–58.
• Zinger, L. S. (1980). Памяти большого художника // Певец киргизского народа. Сост. Мельникер А. С., Попова А. П. [In memory of a great artist // Singer of the Kyrgyz people. Compiled by A. S. Melniker, A. P. Popova. Melniker A. S., Popova A. P.] (in Russian). Фрунзе: Кыргызстан. pp. 36–45.
• Zinger, L. S. (1989). Послевоенный портрет // Советская портретная живопись 1930-х — конца 1950-х годов [Postwar portrait // Soviet portrait painting of the 1930s - late 1950s] (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. pp. 169–297. ISBN 5-85200-014-0
• Lebedev, P. I. (1963). Искусство портрета в послевоенной живописи // Русская советская живопись. Краткая история [The Art of Portrait in Postwar Painting // Russian Soviet Painting. Brief history] (in Russian). М.: Советский художник. pp. 220–229.
• Leontyeva, G. K. (1964). С. А. Чуйков. Дочь Советской Киргизии. 1948 // Замечательные полотна [S. A. Chuykov. Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. 1948 // Remarkable paintings] (in Russian). Л.: Художник РСФСР. pp. 282–286.
• Markina, T. (2006a). Искусство конца эпохи. Ярмарка «Полвека советского искусства» [Art of the end of an epoch. Half a Century of Soviet Art Fair] (in Russian). Коммерсантъ Weekend: Журнал. p. 68.
• Markina, T. (2006b). Мальчиков Александра Дейнеки оценили недорого. Закрылась ярмарка «Полвека советского искусства» [Alexander Deineka's boys were cheaply priced. Closing the Half a century of Soviet art Fair] (in Russian). Коммерсантъ: Газета. p. 13.
• Polischuk, E. A. (1985). С. Чуйков. Из собрания Государственной Третьяковской галереи [S. Chuykov. From the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery] (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. p. 48.
• Sadykov T. S., Prytkova L. A. (1982). Художники советской Киргизии [Soviet Kirghizia artists] (in Russian). Кыргызстан. p. 272.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Sarabyanov, D. V. (1981). Творческий путь Семёна Чуйкова // Певец киргизского народа. Сост. Мельникер А. С., Попова А. П. [Simion Chuykov's Artistic Way // Singer of the Kyrgyz People] (in Russian). Фрунзе: Кыргызстан. pp. 24–36.
• Sarabyanov, D. V. (1976). "II. Киргизская колхозная сюита". Семён Чуйков [Simion Chuykov] (in Russian). М.: Советский художник. pp. 41–76.
• Семён Афанасьевич Чуйков, Государственная Третьяковская галерея [Simion Afanasyevich Chuykov, State Tretyakov Gallery]. Образ и цвет (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. 1972. p. 4.
• Семён Афанасьевич Чуйков и его эпоха. 1902—1980 [Simion Afanasyevich Chuykov and his era. 1902-1980] (in Russian). Бишкек: Курама АРТ. 2007. p. 152.
• Семён Чуйков «Дочь Советской Киргизии» [Simion Chuykov “Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzstan”] (in Russian). Огонёк: Журнал. 1950.
• Sopotsyonsky, О. I. (1966). Советское искусство. Живопись // Всеобщая история искусств под общей редакцией Б. В. Веймарна и Ю. Д. Колпинского [Soviet Art. Painting] (in Russian). Vol. 6. Book 2. Искусство XX века. М.: Искусство. pp. 97–139.
• Tolstova, Т. (2015). Русские картины с немецкими вопросами [Russian pictures with German questions] (in Russian). Коммерсантъ: Газета.
• Umetalieva, D. T. (1978). Рост мастерства, расширение тематики и жанров в послевоенный период // Изобразительное искусство Киргизии [Growth of mastery, expansion of themes and genres in the post-war period] (in Russian). Фрунзе: Кыргызстан. pp. 46–90.
• Umetalieva, D. T. (1970). Киргизская жанровая живопись в послевоенный период // Киргизская жанровая живопись [Kyrgyz genre painting in the post-war period] (in Russian). Фрунзе: Илим. pp. 24–56.
• Chegodaev, A. D. (1952). Семён Афанасьевич Чуйков. Народный художник Киргизской ССР [Simion Chuykov. People's Artist of the Kyrgyz SSR] (in Russian). М.: Искусство.
• Bazin J.; Dubourg Glatigny P.; Piotrowski P. (2016). Art beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe (1945–1989). Leipzig studies on the history and culture of East-Central Europe. Vol. 3. Leipzig: Central European University Press. p. 530. ISBN 9-789-6338-6083-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Bulanova M.; Rosenfeld A. (2006). Soviet Dis-union: Socialist Realist & Nonconformist Art. Minneapolis: Museum of Russian Art (Minneapolis). p. 183. ISBN 978-0972-1493-27.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Rickleton, C. (2014). La fillette kirghize emblème de l'ère soviétique aura son iPad [The Kyrgyz girl emblem of the Soviet era gets her iPad] (in French). Le Nouvel Observateur: Журнал. p. 68.

External links

• Heritage of the country: Legend painting Daughter of Soviet Kirgizia. AKIpress News Agency (19 September 2012)