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Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva has visited an individual exhibition of Azerbaijan`s People`s Artist Tahir Salahov at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku. Executive Director of the Heydar Aliyev Center Anar Alakbarov addressed the event.

Speaking of the exhibition titled “Life, death and beauty”, Mr. Alakbarov noted the event, as well as several more exhibitions were launched at the center on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the Azerbaijan`s People`s Artist Tahir Salahov.
Rector of the Azerbaijan Academy of Arts, People`s Artist Omar Eldarov also delivered a speech at the event. He spoke of Tahir Salahov`s contributions to the Azerbaijan`s culture.

Tahir Salahov also addressed the event saying the exhibition is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of national leader Heydar Aliyev.

The event participants then viewed the exhibition which entered over 100 works of the well-known painter.

The exhibition will last till November 6.

Tahir Salahov was born in Baku on November 29, 1928. His father Teymur Salahov became a victim of Stalin`s repressions. He was arrested in 1937 and executed shortly after. His mother Sona was left to bring up four children on her own but the family didn`t learn of their father`s death until 1956 after Stalin`s death.

Tahir Slahov studied at the Art College after Azim Azimzade in Baku in 1945-1950 and the Surikov Moscow Art Institute in 1951–1957. 
Salahov won an early recognition after his diploma work titled “the Shift is Over” which was exhibited in 1957 at the Moscow All-Union Art Exhibition and received public and critical acclaim. He became one of the leading representatives of the so-called `severe style”, a trend in Soviet art of the 1960s that aimed to set off a hard, publicist, realist view against the ceremonial “polished reality” of the Joseph Stalin era. Salahov`s compositions on the life and work of the Baku oil-workers (e.g. `Repair Men`, 1961, Mustafayev Azerbaijan State Museum of Art, Baku) and portraits, e.g., of Azerbaijani composer Kara Karayev (1960, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), and Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1976, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), are characterized by a forcefulness and lack of idealization. Salahov chose a sparing palette of contrasting red, black, light- and dark-grey tones and gave colored plains a decorative function.

His later works are more peaceful and lyrically contemplative, and Eastern influences are more apparent, as in Portrait of Grandson Dan (1983, Azerbaijan State Museum of Art), in which the composition and colouring are subordinate to the flowing rhythms of Eastern medieval miniatures. His lines became smoother and more melodious, his palette more sophisticated. Many of his most successful works are associated with his impressions of foreign countries. He also produced expressive drawings and stage designs.

Today Salahov lives in Moscow, where he is a professor and has a studio at the Moscow Art Institute. He has received numerous honors, including People`s Artist of USSR, Russia and Azerbaijan, Hero of Socialist Labour, USSR State Prize (1968), First Secretary of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1973–1992), Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Arts, member of over 20 academies and other creative organizations throughout the world, including academies of art of France, Spain, Germany and Austria.