Sanabakhan (Sanabar) Atakhanova

Sanabar Atakhanova comes from sunny Tajikistan. Ziiakhan Shaigeldinov, a handsome, dashing cameraman-reporter for Kazakhtelefilm, fell in love with Sanabar Atakhanova, a young beauty of extraordinary appearance: huge eyes, framed by feathery eyelashes, chiseled features, and a slender build. He brought her to sunny Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, where she gave birth to three daughters. In 1975, Atakhanova enrolled in the Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages; then, in 1986, she enrolled in the Alma-Ata Art College.

Along with artists from the future group Zelenyi treugolnik [Green Triangle], Atakhanova organized her first independent exhibition with the support of the Komsomol organization of the art college, which she headed. Atakhanova recalled: “In my third year at the college, they got it into their heads to appoint me secretary of the Komsomol organization. I refused, but management insisted: ‘Well, why not? Better it’s you than someone else!’ and so I agreed.”

Soon after, Shaigeldinov (also known as Shai-Ziia, 1948–2000) dove into the whirlwind world of Alma-Ata avant-garde art—profoundly, recklessly, and for a long time. He called himself Warhol #2, and he called his art Opt-Art (optical art). Shaigeldinov was instantly interested in all of perestroika’s delights: UFOs, extrasensory perception, tuning in at night to radio stations with call signs from parallel universes, in search of intelligent civilizations, and the avant-garde art. Predictably, two such bright, confident, and independent personalities became cramped under one roof, and Shaigeldinov and Atakhanova soon parted ways.

From Atakhanova’s autobiography: “From childhood, I had always heard about Alma-Ata from my classmates and friends. That is, there was always some indication that I was destined for this city. Gradually, the Komsomol committee became a refuge for artists. … Damir Krivenko, Vasya Vinogradov, Natasha Rustambekova, and others came there. I saw their work and suggested to our department head: ‘Let’s put on an exhibition, but not along themes of ‘labor,’ ‘fatherland,’ or ‘Kazakhstan, my Motherland,’ but simply ‘the free.’ And we did it. It was early 1989, the beginning of the Soviet collapse.

“My view of the world was changing. My perceptions of things and interpretation of images and events was changing. And it was quite hard for me, internally, because I am the type of person who has a hard time expressing their feelings outwardly. There were pleasant moments—when we just walked around the city together, talked. The weather was wonderful. We behaved like children, and there was this feeling that it all belonged to us: this city, this world, and we were free.

“But on the inside, I was having a breakdown. At first they (the artists of the Green Triangle group) seemed to me somehow feignedly liberated and hyper benevolent. In the fall, they invited me over, and I met Petukhov, Alma, Saule, Borya, and others.

“One day I came home, and the whole group was sitting in my apartment, and Petukhov was drawing ‘Gagarin’s Flight’ with my eldest daughter. They behaved quite freely, which was unusual for me. Petukhov introduced himself as an informal artist from St. Petersburg. Then he asked: ‘What do you do here?’ And, having learned that I was working with the Komsomol, he suggested building bridges with the regional committee. Later, I contacted the Isker company and presented our idea to the Dosug center.

“In the end, all this resulted in an organized action. By January, we already had a contract in hand that noted the place and time of the exhibition. The Dosug center rented us a space in the Geology Museum. It was a time of change. And, of course, Petukhov sowed the seed of this subculture on cultivated soil. People were ready for this step.”

Atakhanova’s paintings and works on paper were created in the early years of the Green Triangle group. Her work was distinguished by its bright colors, its expressiveness, and a genuine sincerity—the desire to present an uninhibited perspective. This was characteristic of perestroika-era artists who broke away from the established canons and clichés of Soviet painting, played and experimented with form, color, and composition, and boldly introduced lively, unkempt, daring themes into their art. These artists burst open the consciousness of millions of Soviet people who were discovering anew the world of art.

Atakhanova often turned to abstract forms and even biblical subjects. Her work Lestnitsa Iakova [Jacob’s ladder] (1994) was permeated with M. C. Escher–like twisted, multicolored spirals, lines flowing into one another, and the recurring image of a ladder. In her paintings, Atakhanova employed geometric figures, complex linear-graphic intersections, and layers. In her relatively small but very valuable artistic legacy, many works show a powerful temperament, figurative thinking, mastery of compositional techniques, and a unique sense of color and rhythm.

She also favored fairy-tale motifs: fantastical creatures taken straight from her subconscious. It’s on display in the painting Butterfly (1989), where a huge butterfly hovers in space above the earth, its transparent wings refracting the scarlet madder of the sunset sky, the emerald of dense forests, the azure of crystal lakes, and the carbon black of fertile black soil. The work features two triangles, one scarlet-orange, one black, that are made up of flowing, colored stripes. The two unite in the middle, forming a golden-gray and transparent butterfly body.

The fantastical also shines in her mysterious work featuring a flying griffin, where a predatory black bird with protruding wings, a long, hooked beak, and a huge sad eye comes down to us. Its mysterious ashen silhouette is subtly and masterfully bordered by a halo of white filaments. The bird is a clot of energy, snatched out of the expressive, swiftly painted background. It wanders alone through the world, like a chimera in the gloomy distance, and only the glint of lemon-yellow and red flashes behind its wings remind us of the distant presence of a bygone paradise.

In her abstract works, Atakhanova used a combination of sultry, rich shades and bright, expansive colors, complementing them with more complex hues. She boldly combined rounded and rectangular shapes and lines. The general color range of her paintings was dominated by umber browns, interspersed with rich yellow ocher, and red spots, as well as ornate black lines.

In the reproduction of the painting Winter (1988, ZAM, 2000.0739) from the Zimmerli’s collection, we see an abstract composition made up of a magnificent combination of splashes of color. But it is a mystery why the work is called Winter, when it’s reminiscent of the heat of Africa or Atakhanova’s native Khujand—where she felt so cramped that she turned into a butterfly and flew to Almaty, the bustling center of post-perestroika Central Asia. In the center of the painting are two yellow figures, around them a sprinkling of splotches in muted blue, green, and red. Against the black background, these colorful splashes stand out like reefs or islands—they glow and pulsate, as if erupting from a single cosmic sphere painted by the confident hand of the creator-demiurge. The composition practically vibrates with cacophonous jazz sounds. This compositional technique is similar to the composition of the butterfly painting.

Atakhanova was in close contact with Kazakhstan’s intellectual and artistic bohemia, formed in the 1980s–90s. Among her friends and acquaintances were the poets, translators, and philosophers Igor Poluyakhtov and Zhanat Baimukhametov, united both metaphorically and geographically, as they all lived on the outskirts of Alma-Ata on different sides of Saina Street, and they all had a penchant for being cupbearers.

The exhibition for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Green Triangle (which was Atakhanova’s last) at the gallery Belyi Roial’ (White Royal) included several of her iconic works and was a real escape from her workdays (she taught English and supported her family in Khujand, helping her daughter and father). At the exhibition, she also presented her new graphic series of compositions, drawn on paper with fluorescent gel pens. These impulsive sketches reflected her state of mind and were her artistic outlet, her meditative cosmic immersions into the world of line and color, into which she escaped from the ordinary routine of her everyday life as an English teacher. After all, most of her energy was not spent on creativity, but on surviving from paycheck to paycheck.

Even her departure from this world was such that she did not want to cause her loved ones any extra trouble; she endured until the very end. Here is one of her poems:

We walk along the edge of a knife
Mindlessly, slowly, obediently.
Our feet are bleeding, our souls, too—
But we remain indifferent.

Even our hair hurts,
Our legs, our eardrums.
Our weak and fragile little souls
Are swayed by the winds of eternity in their sleep.

Zitta Sultanbaeva

Translated from Russian by Jane Bugaeva