Kanafi Nafikov. History from Nariman

Kanafi Nafikov is a historical artist, theater decorator, portrait painter, painter and graphic artist. Such outstanding masters of Tatar art as Baki Urmanche and Chingiz Akhmarov took part in its formation.

Kanafi Abzaletdinovich Nafikov was born in 1938 in the village of Old Utyamysh of the Cheremshansky district of the TASSR. In 1966 he graduated from the Kazan Art College, where he studied at the theater and decoration department under the direction of A.I. Tumasheva. In 1967–1973 studied at the Tashkent Theater and Art Institute. After returning to Kazan, the creative collaboration of the young artist with republican theaters began. A constant parallel to the development of theatrical and decorative sketches for Kanafi Nafikov is easel painting - work on a portrait, landscape, on a picture of the domestic and historical genre. Scene and reality merge, intersect and are embodied in a kind of synthesis - an independent historical and ethnographic genre is born. The painter Kanafi Nafikov chose for himself as the main vector of creativity the theme of the great city on the Volga, the beliefs of the people living here, its customs and holidays, folklore and poetry. “Bulgars are a reality. Of course, without straining imagination it is difficult to imagine life, events, faces… I think, I imagine, and then I try to translate visuality into a picture… Of course, the responsibility is huge… ”

The exhibition “History from Nariman” that opens in the Khazine National Art Gallery of the Pushkin Museum of the Republic of Tajikistan presents works by Kanafi Nafikov that he created over the past decade. The chronicle of the historian Nariman (“Nariman Tarihi”, 1037), which saved dozens of Bulgarian legends, formed the basis of the historical code of the South Bulgarian chronicles of the great Bulgarian historian Daish Karachai al-Bulgari (1323-1405) and, in part, the basis of the works of Kanafi Abzaletdinovich. The artist, as a meticulous archaeologist, numismatist and researcher of the past, builds a chain and puts it on the beloved soil of the ancient Bulgaria that he suffered - “Nardugan Holiday in Ancient Bulgaria”, “Prayer in Karameti”, “Plow Festival”, “Tulpar and Bulgar Batyr” and other

The works of Kanafi Nafikov are in the collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Museum of National Culture, the Bulgarian Historical and Architectural Reserve, the Museum of the Theater named after G. Kamal, the Marjani Foundation, and in foreign private collections.

The exhibition runs until May 12, 2019.