I became acquainted with Farkhad Khalilov’s work in 2014, when I had the privilege of visiting the artist’s studio in Baku several times, during which he introduced me to his forty years of painting. Of all the phases evidenced by Khalilov’s paintings over the years, the current period is extraordinary for its expression of a newly found freedom that infuses his work with a striking force and sensitivity.
The artist’s work is unique within its milieu, the Caucasus region. It is honed in endless hours of studio work; the palette is often bleak and severe, yet the rich textures and delicate compositions convey a luminous and forceful beauty. Indeed, Khalilov’s work conjures up a strong sense of place—there are echoes of the browns of the soil and the reds of pomegranates and persimmons hanging from the trees planted in the countryside around Baku—while at the same time it transcends the particular.
For years Khalilov employed wide canvases to evoke the expansive horizons of seascapes and other Azerbaijani landscapes in abstract compositions comprising simple shapes and strong fields of colour. The views that have informed his work more recently, however, have been neither the Caspian Sea nor the countryside wedged between his atelier and its shore. Leaving behind the flat surfaces of the 1990s, Khalilov has, in recent years, turned toward creating jagged, nervous strokes of colour through rhythmic medium-size brushstrokes.
Whereas his earlier seascapes could be described as contemplative and even vaguely representational, Khalilov’s newer paintings are freely improvised expressions of abstract emotion and feelings—reflections of an expansive inner life and a free-flowing thought process. In other words, he has switched his focus from the physical to the spiritual world, something that is also conveyed through the architectural structure of his canvases.
This exhibition of Khalilov’s recent work makes reference to his past achievements, revealing his position vis-à-vis the official art of the Soviet Union. Born in 1946, he was trained at the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts, in Baku. An early oil-on-Masonite portrait in the exhibition, Portrait of an Old Man,1 1961, got him only an average mark, the equivalent of a grade C. From the beginning, Khalilov positioned himself as an anti-academic painter, and you could say that this stance is an integral part of his DNA. His early works often represented trees, resembling those depicted by Piet Mondrian, as in Evening; Red Tree (Avond; De rode boom),2 of 1908-10. Khalilov’s early painting, Snow on the Beach,3 1982, which he refers to as a self-portrait, is a work of Symbolist sensitivity in line with the trees painted by the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler, Lilac Tree, (Fliederbäumchen),4 1892.
It took Khalilov some time to find his most confident voice, as is often the case with artists who work both within and against centuries-long traditions. Flashes of brilliance lit a solid practice, indicating a radical approach to picture making that often anticipated the freedom and depth of his recent work, such as From the Cycle “Meeting”,5 1983. Indeed, a visit to his studio is full of surprises and hidden treasures. A true “artist’s artist”, Khalilov secrets his work away from outside viewers, doling out paintings one by one and often hiding his most beloved creations.
What resonates most strongly within the emotional articulations of his paintings is the music—mostly jazz—that he listens to with an expert ear. (Khalilov plays the piano, and there are two upright pianos in his studio.) The eccentric pacing and syncopated rhythms of jazz have been constant presences in his work since 2011: one can easily visualize the dissonances and melodic twists of Thelonious Monk’s music in his bold brushstrokes. As in Monk’s music, there is no reticence in Khalilov’s approach to painting. His method is also improvisational and often abrupt, “Autumn View”,6 2014-15, with a visual harmony constructed upon the many variations of paintbrush traces.
A fountain of red can be deciphered in From the Cycle, “Earth Patterns”,7 2014-15, a flowing retinue of marks that separate in the middle of the canvas to expose a dark brown background. This technique could be a visual reflection of John Coltrane’s “sheets of sound”, as described by critic Ira Gitler. The dense, improvisational patterned lines liquidize and loosen the strict structure of geometry, evoking the musician’s “multinote hailstorms of dense textures that sound like a simultaneous series of waterfalls”—as described in the liner notes for “Giant Steps”.
Many of Khalilov’s recent compositions can be compared to the structure of jazz, a testimony to his creative independence. His sophisticated sense of texture also echoes that of music, in the way he combines melodic and rhythmic forms with harmonic materials to form a picture. Finally, the notion of tempo is rooted in his works: for example, the brushstrokes of From the Cycle “Meeting”,8 2014-15 evoke a steady pulse that resounds with the excitement of the urban context, echoing the shapes of contemporary architecture in Baku.
Khalilov’s generous personality corresponds to that of his work—never constrained and always open to conveying the most subtle and complex emotions. I thank the artist for our long and enlightening conversations in Baku. I would also like to thank Farkhad Akhmedov, Tatyana Akhmedova and Temur and Edgar Akhmedov for their invaluable support of the artist’s work and my curatorial endeavours. It was both a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with Farkhad Akhmedov and to browse his important collection of international masters, which includes the largest collection of works by Ivan Aivazovsky and Azeri artists, in private hands, as well as major works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Yves Klein, Tom Wesselmann, Peter Doig and Andreas Gursky. His 26-year commitment to and support of Khalilov’s work—which has also been extended to many other Azeri artists—has, in my opinion, led to one of the finest and most dynamic collections I have visited.
Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to Roger Cook for his most thoughtful and insightful essay.