Rasim Babayev

December 31, 1927 (age 79)

Baku, Azerbaijan

Rasim Babayev started his career in 1955 in a Moscow studio which produced films for children. A year later, he came back to Baku where he worked along with Alekper Rzaguliyev who introduced him to linocuts. Soon, Babayev turned to cardboard and hardboard. Searching for his niche, he experimented with a variety of mediums and genres, including painting, graphics, installations, and decoration of ceramics, manufacture tiles, and carved figures. He also tried his hand as an illustrator producing a number of pictures for children’s books. The artist worked with ‘Dispute of Fruit’ by Fużūlī, Mirza Alakbar Sabir’s ‘Hophopname’, and several pieces by Dreiser. It was during this period of time when he developed an interest in Azerbaijani mythology and came across the character which later would become one of the main subjects of his canvases, an ogre. The 1960s were rich on new experiences, reflections, and meetings for Rasim Babayev. The artist shared his views on the meaning and purpose of art with his cousins Javad Miijavadov and Tofig Javadov, as well as with colleagues Fazil Najafov, Gorkmaz Efendiyev, Kamal Ahmedov, and Sanan Gurbanov. Along with Javad and Tofig, he traveled a lot around his home country searching for the sources of inspiration which he found in the beauty of the mountains and valleys he observed. Babayev’s early black and white linocuts, drawings and etchings gave place to the depictions of camels, trees, birds, old men, and women. The painter experimented with colors and shapes. By the 1970s, Rasim Babayev’s creative pursuit led him to be considered as the philosophical, dreamy and poetic artist who managed to express the inner side of a human world in a sensitive and strained way. Alien and unrecognizable at first sight, the canvases appealed to the reality shown from the perspective of the child’s dream. ‘Good People’ series, ‘Earth’, ‘Heaven’, ‘The Coast’, ‘The Herd’, and ‘Dream’ were among the examples. Some of these works made in a palette of earth and sky, ochre-blue, were presented at the artist’s solo exhibitions in Bakhulzade Gallery of Baku, in Art Gallery of the Moscow Union of Artists, and in the Central State Gallery in Nakhchivan in 1976, 1977, and 1978 respectively. The next decade brought darker, screaming colors to Babayev’s art. The artist produced the most horrific of such kind of paintings in the middle of the 1980s, including ‘The Killer’, ‘War’, ‘Hall of Fame’, and ‘Ceremony of Congratulations’. The eternal stories of the Bible and Quran interpreted in a primitive way were embodied in his ‘Adam and Eve’ series. The dark period changed again for the bright one at the end of the decade what was reflected in his ‘Angels’ series. From 1987 to 1990, his canvases were exhibited in France and were later demonstrated at solo shows in Finland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Germany. In 2001, Babayev brought his works to China. Under the impression from the ancient culture of Eurasia, the artist came back to the black-and-white graphics using Japanese paper as a canvas. Contrary to the works of his early years which expressed the hidden conflicts of the world, these later works were filled with humor and acceptance of life.

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