Chingiz Akhmarov

Chingiz Akhmarov was born on 18 August 1912 (5 August in the old style) in Troitsk, in what is now the Chelyabinsk region, into an educated Tatar family. He was one of eleven children, and the household kept a large library inherited from his grandfather. From childhood he copied illustrations from books and magazines.

From 1927 to 1931 he studied at the Perm art college. In 1927 his family moved to Uzbekistan because of his father's health, first to Qarshi and then to Samarkand. After finishing college he too lived in Samarkand, taught drawing, and made illustrations for the magazines Mushtum and Mash'al. In 1934 he moved to Tashkent and worked for publishers, illustrating books by writers such as Shokir Sulaymon's Li Chu.

In 1935 Akhmarov entered the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow, where his teachers were first Vladimir Favorsky and then Igor Grabar and Nikolai Chernyshev. During the war the institute was temporarily in Samarkand, and Akhmarov graduated there in 1942 with the triptych The Sword of Uzbekistan as his diploma work. From 1943 to 1949 he did postgraduate studies at the institute and became a candidate of art studies.

His best-known work is the set of murals in the foyer of the Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tashkent (1944–1947), based on themes from Navoi's Khamsa and painted in a building designed by Alexey Shchusev. For it he received the Stalin Prize, first class, in 1948. In the 1950s he took part in the mosaic Friendship of Peoples for Moscow's Kievskaya metro station on the Circle line, and in 1955–1956 he decorated the foyer of the Musa Jalil Opera and Ballet Theatre in Kazan.

From the 1960s he lived in Tashkent and brought the tradition of the Eastern miniature into monumental painting. He painted murals for the Ulugh Beg museum in Samarkand (1963–1964), the Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (1968–1969), the Navoi literary museum and the Yulduz restaurant in Samarkand, and decorated the Alisher Navoi station of the Tashkent metro. He also worked as a book illustrator and portraitist and designed for stage and film, including Sharaf Rashidov's Kashmir Legend, Maqsud Shaykhzoda's tragedy Mirzo Ulugh Beg (1964) and the film The Star of Ulugh Beg.

On 13 November 1964 he was named People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR, in 1968 he received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1992 he was recognised as People's Artist of Tatarstan. He taught at the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute and at the Benkov art college, and was a professor. In his last years he painted several works on the theme of Amir Temur (1992–1995).

Chingiz Akhmarov died in Tashkent on 13 March 1995 and was buried at the Chigatai cemetery. In 2001 he was posthumously awarded the Order «For Outstanding Merit»; a memorial plaque was placed on his house in 2006, and a book of his memoirs appeared in 2007. His works are held by the Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, the Museum of Applied Arts, the Navoi State Museum of Literature and other collections.