The exhibition "Uzbekistan: Avant-garde in the Desert" at the I.V. Savitsky State Museum of Art in Nukus will remain open until December 2025.
The art school in Turkestan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries developed gradually. At this stage, Russian masters Vasily Vereshchagin and Richard-Karl Sommer arrived here. They worked in the realist school, engaging in ethnographic recording of the architectural features of Turkestan settlements and the everyday life of their inhabitants. Already in the 1920s and 1930s, the next generation of artists, such as Nikolai Karakhan and Pavel Benkov, continued the realist tradition, incorporating innovative avant-garde techniques.
🖼 Richard-Karl Sommer, "Shahi-Zinda" (late 19th-early 20th century); Nikolai Karakhan, "Entrance to the Madrasah"; Pavel Benkov, "Kalan Minaret," 1930s.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)