Time is a stubborn factor, and it is safe to say that the works presented here have passed their test of time and indeed represent the “Golden Fund” of the Azerbaijani Fine Arts. This is the only way – by showing high-quality art charged with a spiritual energy – the education of a competent, intelligent spectator is possible. This is the only way art can regain its original function as a bearer of spirituality, as a sensitive seismograph of social life.
As we know, art as a sort of human activity is associated with many aspects of a person’s spiritual life. First, it is a colossal charge of positive emotions associated with a deep aesthetic impression. After all, the need for beauty is as inherent in man as the need for food, relaxation, sleep… Possessing the broadest abilities of emotional impact, art, too, has always been a tool for ideological education, when certain ideas represented through certain images or art forms are getting an irrefutable argument endowed with the power of persuasion at an almost subconscious level.
Undoubtedly: art is inextricably linked with its time. This is a “mirror of the era”, directly reflecting not as much the facts themselves as the internal mechanisms, experiences, emotional life of a society of one or another period. Being a product of the spiritual life of individual representatives of their country, culture, time, the artifacts – works of painting, graphics, sculpture – not only “calling a spade a spade”, but also gradually, through the nature of means of artistic expressiveness reflect the real, genuine tonality of that or other historical period.
Turning to art, we comprehend the era. Turning to art, we comprehend the beauty, the depths of human nature, we comprehend ourselves. Nowhere else will we get to such an extent the harmonization of feelings, knowledge, sensations, as it happens to us in the museums while being in contact with the beauty. Perceiving the results of spiritual activities of the past and present, unconsciously, we are involuntarily imbued with the very vibration of energy waves, through which we achieve a subtle, invisible, but so necessary for all of us connection with the universe.
After all, any artifact is a fruit of the once found, “happened” consonance between the soul strings of the artist and the Cosmos. That is why any artifact is always unique, because it is the intersection point of the “here and now” of many factors, each of which af fects the final result in its own way.
Portals on art have a big advantage: unlike museum halls, here we can always be left alone with a masterpiece in tune with you. A portal is something that is always available, the materialization of spirituality, a channel that is always open for our communication with the cultural heritage of the past. Also, unlike museums, in albums, in the portals on art, we get the opportunity to perceive the enormous layer of art that is actually hidden from the outsider’s eyes in the storerooms of the museum collections, so that this or that selection of reproductions in the portal becomes a real discovery for the reader.
There is a hope that this portal dedicated to Azerbaijani visual arts will be a true discovery for the readers.
The age of the gallery, founded in 1974, of course, is significantly inferior to the real age of the Azerbaijani art school in the modern sense, which began to take shape as a comprehensive, organizationally structured phenomenon since 1920. However, the works that make up the Gallery’s foundation today fully reflect the picture of the country’s historical past – close and distant – as well as the richest artistic heritage of Azerbaijani culture, rooted in ancient times. All the ups and downs of the formation and development of the modern art school of Azerbaijan are reflected in the collection of the gallery. These are the works themselves, which were once at the epicenter of artistic and ideological disputes, and historical reflections of artists, who always, starting from the first steps of professional art education in the republic, have been paying special attention to the reproduction and reconstruction of events, facts, and personalities of the past. Such a human memory. The present is not enough for us. After all, what is happening to us today is sometimes the result of yesterday. We turn to the past in order to understand the present and perhaps to foresee the future…
The artists shown here belong to different generations, styles, different creative beliefs. However, something unites them all and allows them to be shown “side by side” in the pages of this album. This is the very nature of creativity, which, despite any political changes, lives according to its own internal laws. It does not matter in which style or direction a particular artist works. It is important that the driving force in this case is a feeling, not reasoning. For, art never lies. And in this sense, the artistic material of any era is the most authentic, most truthful document of its time.
This portal is an attempt to remind a viewer, life of which today is literally filled with the spirit of pragmatism and routine, that somewhere nearby, in parallel with everyday vanity, there is a world that is special and refined. This is a world of spiritual values and harmony, a world where beauty is perceived by the inner eye, and everything material loses its tangibility.