DEPICTING ABAI

However, the true breakthrough came with the discovery of an authentic photograph of Abai, which, for the first time, gave artists a reliable documentary reference. This fundamentally reshaped how they approached constructing the poet’s image by moving beyond imaginative interpretation and paving the way for a more disciplined search for an accurate likeness. A major step in this direction was taken in 1934, when the first official competition devoted to Abai’s portrait was held at the Central Museum in Almaty, organized by the Organizing Bureau of the Artists’ Union of Kazakhstan in collaboration with the National Institute of Cultural Studies.

The artists at the competition faced a demanding challenge: to create a canonical image of Abai. In doing so, the event not only initiated a more rigorous search for an authentic likeness of the great thinker but also contributed to the formation of Kazakhstan’s professional school of portrait painting.

Notably, the professional search for Abai’s image in painting unfolded in parallel with the emergence of Kazakhstan’s national school of fine art. The formation of the Union of Artists in Kazakhstan took place in several stages, and a key catalyst for the widespread establishment of local artistic associations was the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of 23 April 23 1932 titled ‘On the Reorganization of Literary and Artistic Organizations’.

The Organizing Committee of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan was established in 1933iThe Union of Artists of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Documents and Photographs, 1933–1991. Almaty, 2009, p. 17. One of the first and most significant initiatives of the newly formed Union was the professional competition to create the best portrayal of Abai. The choice of theme was deeply symbolic: the competition was held in 1934 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the poet’s death. Artists were tasked with producing a canonical, instantly recognizable image of Abai, which was destined to serve as the definitive visual representation and firmly establish itself in the public consciousness.

The prerequisites for this initiative had taken shape a year earlier, during preparations for an exhibition of Kazakh fine art in Moscow. In the mid-1930s, such exhibitions were held across all Union republics to showcase the achievements of socialist culture. One such exhibition opened on 8 May 1934 at the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.

The final exhibition of the competition was held at the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan, showcasing works by twenty artists. At the closing session on 25 July, the jury reviewed a total of twenty-two portraits. Notably, no first prize was awarded in the oil painting category; the second place went to A. M. Zotikov, and third to A. A. Ritikh. In the graphic arts category, however, the outcome was decisive from the start: A. S. Ponomarev was awarded first placeiThe Union of Artists of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Documents and Photographs, 1933–1991. Almaty, 2009, p. 20.

The writer Yuri Dombrovsky, who attended the final exhibition, did not conceal his disappointment. ‘It seemed as though the same old Kazakh was staring at me from all the canvases,’ he remarked with some frustrationiA. Jadaybayev. Materials on the Life and Work of A. Kasteev. Manuscript. His reaction highlighted the striking visual uniformity of the works on display. The implication was clear: the artists were extremely limited in the sources available to them. Put simply, they were all working from the same reference material.

However, an important detail complicates this conclusion. According to official records, the famous photograph of Abai with his sons—Aqylbai and Turagul—was not added to the poet’s museum in Semipalatinsk until 6 February 1941. The photograph was donated by Mukhtar Auezov himself, who listed his Almaty address in Receipt No. 40iPhoto Image of Abai /Abai.—1995.—No. 3 — pp. 36–37.

This raises a key question: if the photograph that later became the foundation for Abai’s canonical image only entered the museum collection—and became publicly accessible—seven years after the 1934 competition, what sources were the artists relying on at that time? What visual and documentary sources shaped the image of Abai presented at the competition exhibition?

Although Mukhtar AuezoviMukhtar Auezov (1897–1961) was the great Kazakh writer, author of the seminal national novel The Path of Abai. did not officially donate the photograph to the museum until 1941, it is possible that he may have been involved in preparing the competition years earlier. Several sources note that the photograph had been given to him by the writer Manap Moldabayev as early as 1933. According to archival records of the scholar Kayym Mukhamedkhanov, the photograph remained in Auezov’s personal archive until 6 February 1941iAbai with His Sons: The Fate of the Photograph // Vechernyaya Astana. — 2020. — No. 20. — p. 6.

In 1934, Auezov was working at the Kazakh Drama Theatre and was at the very center of Almaty’s cultural life. As one of the principal promoters of Abai’s legacy, he could well have shown this photograph to the competition organizers or directly to the artists, allowing copies to be made from it.

It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that as early as 1934, artists were already producing portraits of Abai using this photograph as their primary reference. This assumption is further supported by the surviving photographic documentation of the competition works, whose visual affinity with the poet’s photographic portrait is unmistakable. Art historian E. Mikulskaya observed in her book, Portrait of Kazakhstan:

Indeed, it is enough for us to turn to the work of A. S. Ponomarev, which won first place in the Graphics category. The artist’s reliance on the documentary accuracy of the photograph is evident in several key details. Most notably, Ponomarev reproduced the nuances of light and shadow from the original image with near literal precision. The light falling from the left sharply defines the contours of the face and is clearly visible along the line of the nose and in the highlight on the lower lip.

The entire composition of the portrait, including its sense of volume, is constructed through the direct transfer of shadow masses from the photograph. Despite working in watercolor, the artist sought to render the finest facial details—the area around the eyes, the curve of the eyebrows, the gray in the beard—with the same degree of contrast found in the original image. All of this suggests that the artist either copied the photograph by hand with almost jeweler-like precision or made use of specialized projection devices.

Moreover, the lines of the folds on the right shoulder of the shekpen or chapan (outer garments worn by men over other clothing for warmth) that Abai is wearing, as well as the upper edge of the white shirt, are reproduced exactly as in the photograph. This once again confirms that, in this work, the artist consciously prioritized documentary accuracy over personal artistic interpretation.

Another work clearly based on the same photograph is A. M. Zotikov's portrait of Abai, which was awarded second place in the Painting category. Unfortunately, the painting has only survived in the form of a photographic reproduction. Even so, it allows us to see that the artist replicated the composition without the slightest deviation: the beard, mustache, and facial features precisely echo the original. This is especially evident in the effort to convey the weight of the gaze, the characteristic eyelids, and the line of the lips.

Although Zotikov attempted to ‘animate’ the portrait by giving Abai’s figure a certain dynamism through a slight turn of the shoulders, he left the poet’s head and facial features virtually unchanged. The artist likely deliberately avoided any interpretive deviations, fearing that it would distort the poet’s appearance. Since this angle was the only officially documented image of Abai, any deviation from it risked being perceived as a gross historical error.

It is equally telling that in Zotikov’s work, Abai’s attire—down to the smallest folds and the precise placement of buttons—faithfully mirrors the photograph. Particularly noteworthy is the poet’s chapan, rendered with vertical stripes that exactly match the pattern seen in the image. Had the artist sought only to produce a generalized ‘historical’ likeness, he could have freely altered the ornamentation or left the garment monochrome. However, the precise reproduction of the fabric’s texture and striped pattern indicates that the master regarded every detail of the photograph as an indisputable documentary fact.

It is, of course, difficult today to fully gauge the scope of the 1934 exhibition as most of the portraits that it featured have either been lost or never entered scholarly catalogs and albums. Currently, only two works from that exhibition are preserved in the collection of the Abilkhan Kasteev State Museum of Arts.

One of these rare paintings was created by Beisenbai Sarsenbayev, one of the first professional artists to emerge from the Kazakh steppe. His artistic career began in the early 1930s but proved tragically short. Sarsenbayev was born in 1914 in the Kokshetau region, and in 1938, at just twenty-four years of age, his life was tragically cut short in AlmatyiPainting. Scholarly Catalogue / A. Kasteev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan. — Almaty, 2017. — Vol. 1, p. 431.

His painting Abai (1934, oil on cardboard, 57 × 38 cm) was acquired for the museum collection directly from the artist in 1936. Today, it remains Sarsenbayev’s only surviving work and is featured in the museum’s permanent exhibition.

In this portrait, the young artist deliberately departs from the traditional frontal pose, rendering Abai’s head in a slight turn, which was likely in an attempt to convey the facial structure, gaze, and subtle nuances of light and shadow more expressively. The focus is firmly on the poet’s face, while the traditional Kazakh ornamentation in the background complements the composition, imbuing it with a refined sense of national character.

The link between the portrait and Abai’s photograph is apparent in every detail: the rendering of the clothing, the features of the skullcap, and the poet’s distinctive facial traits. Sarsenbayev’s work can rightly be seen as both a historical and artistic document—it was one of the earliest efforts by Kazakh artists to translate the poet’s image from photograph to canvas, filtered through their own skill and professional vision.

The second work preserved in the museum’s collection is Abilkhan Kasteev’siAbilkhan Kasteev (1904–1973) was a foundational figure in Kazakh visual art, widely celebrated as the first and most important professional Kazakh painter of the Soviet era. composition Abai by the Yurt, which was painted in 1934. Researcher E. Vandrovska noted: ‘Kasteev submitted several watercolors for the competition, but only one has survived to the present day’iA. Jadaybayev. Materials on the Life and Work of A. Kasteev. Manuscript. This work (watercolor on paper, 68 × 56 cm) serves as a kind of painterly illustration of Abai’s famous poem ‘Jaz’ (‘Summer’). Inspired by the poem’s rhythm, Kasteev sought to render, through color, the very breath of nature and the vibrant, motion-filled world that Abai so vividly depicted.

Since Kasteev began exhibiting in 1934, this watercolor can be considered one of his earliest works. In addition, the museum’s collection holds two more works by the artist from the same year, also devoted to the poet. The first is a pencil drawing on paper (25 × 14 cm), depicting Abai in full length. This work embodies a direct, unembellished realism, with the artist clearly striving for the utmost accuracy in capturing the poet’s facial features.

The second work, simply titled Portrait of Abai, is rendered in ink on paper in a larger format (88 × 62 cm). In this piece, the poet is depicted seated, and the likeness—which was only hinted at in the earlier pencil sketch—becomes strikingly clear. It is evident that the artist, working closely from the photographic source, aimed to achieve maximum recognizability of Abai’s image, carefully attending to every detail—from the texture of the shapan to the ornamentation of the tyubeteikaiTyubeteika is the Russified name of an embroidered Central Asian skullcap worn by men, a key marker of ethnic identity and cultural heritage across the region.

It is unclear whether Aubakir Ismailov, the prominent Kazakh journalist and political figure, participated in that particular exhibition; however, it is well documented that in 1933, he was elected the first chairman of the Union of Artists of KazakhstaniThe Union of Artists of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Documents and Photographs. 1933–1991. Almaty, 2009, p. 20.

The museum’s collection includes his watercolor Abai, which was created around the same time. This small-format work, measuring just 22.3 × 26 cm, was acquired by the Abilkhan Kasteev State Museum of Arts in 1976, transferred from the Directorate of Art Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Kazakh SSRiPainting. Scientific Catalog / A. Kasteev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Almaty, 2017, Vol. 1, p. 431.

In this watercolor, the artist’s compositional experimentation is clearly visible. Ismailov depicts Abai deep in thought, leaning slightly forward with a pen and paper in his hands. The background shows an expansive village scene with yurts, grazing horses, and the endless steppe stretching toward distant mountains. Rather than strictly following a photographic reference, the work offers a lyrical, narrative interpretation. The artist focuses less on Abai’s outward appearance and more on conveying his inner world, his poetic contemplation, and the historical context in which he lived.

The very existence of this work indicates that the artistic understanding of the thinker’s image began even before the official 1934 competition was announced.

The works showcased at the 1934 exhibition varied widely in both quality and style. Despite the scale of the event and the significance of its theme, the exhibition elicited little response at the time, neither from the general public nor from professional circles. Nevertheless, it marked the beginning of a series of professional competitions that, over time, became a regular practice for Kazakhstani artists. Soon thereafter, the country began hosting major thematic exhibitions devoted to figures such as Amangeldi Imanov (1936), Jambyl Jabaev (1937), Abai again (1945), and Qurmangazy (1958).

Ultimately, the 1934 competition became the starting point of a lasting tradition. Since then, each generation of Kazakh artists has sought to capture and reinterpret the great poet through the lens of its own time and artistic vision. Today, contemporary masters continue to explore Abai’s persona, offering fresh and sometimes surprising perspectives. In this way, the ‘search for Abai’ has become a lasting and integral theme of Kazakhstani visual art.