Ravshan Mirtajiev

Jalalitdin (Ravshan) Tursunovich Mirtajiev was born on 15 February 1954 in Tashkent. In 1968 he entered the sculpture department of the P. Benkov Republican Art School, finishing in 1972 in the class of F. Grishchenko, and in 1977 he graduated from the A. N. Ostrovsky Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute.

From 1979 to 1996 he worked in Andijan. These were the years around independence and just after it, when his work rose to a new level: a monument to Babur was set up in Andijan in 1993, one to Abdulla Qodiriy in Tashkent in 1994, a monument to Abdurauf Fitrat was made in Bukhara in 1996–1997 and one to Cho‘lpon in Andijan in 1997. His early works include “Lola”, “Nigora”, “Professor Rasulov” and “Shum bola”.

In Tashkent his monuments stand to Ghafur Ghulam, Zulfiya, Oybek, Beruni, Said Ahmad and Saida Zunnunova; in Samarkand to Rudaki and Mirzo Ulugh Beg, and in Gazalkent to Elbek. He is the author of the “Oath to the Homeland” monument in the capital and of the “Grieving Mother” monuments in Jizzakh, Andijan and Fergana.

In the 2000s his works were also set up abroad: in Moscow the monuments to Alisher Navoi and Ulugh Beg, in Riga to Ulugh Beg and Ibn Sina, in Baku and Tokyo to Navoi, in Cairo to al-Farghani, and in China to Kamoliddin Behzod (2003, Changchun). A model of the Navoi monument is kept in the Library of Congress in Washington. He was an honorary professor of Shanghai University.

He belonged to the Union of Artists of Uzbekistan from 1983 and, from 1997, to the creative association of artists under the Academy of Arts. In 2005–2015 he was deputy chairman of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, and in 2011 he acted as its chairman. He became an Honoured Worker of Culture in 1998 and People’s Painter of Uzbekistan in 2003, and in 2009 he was named Sculptor of the Year.

Ravshan Mirtajiev died on 6 February 2015 in Tashkent and was buried at the Minor cemetery. In 2021, on the 30th anniversary of independence, he was posthumously awarded the Order “For Selfless Service”.