Garif Basyrov

By LatAm ARTE

Garif Basyrov was born in 1944 in ALZHIR (the Russian acronym for the Akmolinsk Camp for wives of traitors to the fatherland), also known as point number 26 on the Karlag map. In the 1960s he studied in Moscow, first at the then-known secondary art school of the Surikov Institute and then at the Art Department of the Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His graduation project was a series of illustrations from Bulgakov's “The Master and Margarita,” which is now required reading in the school curriculum, but which in those years was practically prohibited and was mostly available in samizdat form. . One of his first exhibitions took place in 1970 in the editorial office of the magazine “Yunost” (Youth), another legendary place of the time. Many people first knew him as an illustrator of the magazine “Khimia i zhizn” (Chemistry and Life), which was an island of liberal thought in vast swamps of cultural stagnation that characterized the Brezhnev era. Basyrov tried several different graphic techniques, including printing (engraving and lithography) and pencil and ink drawing, preferring the latter. He experimented with letters and sign systems, abstract collages and sculptural ensembles, surprising viewers (who were often unprepared to be surprised) year after year. Some of his works are “Inhabited Landscapes”, “Towns in the Countryside”, “Space”, “Apocrypha”, “Cornered”, “Long Summer”, “Under the Burden”, “Archaic” and “Curiosities”. Garif Basyrov died the day before his sixtieth birthday.