Savitsky Museum – The Pearl of the Aral Region

The history of the creation of the State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan is closely connected with the biography of the artist Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky, who was one of its founders.

In 1956, Igor Savitsky moved permanently to Nukus, where in those years Marat Nurmukhamedov returned from Moscow, then a young candidate of sciences, who eventually became not only an excellent scientist, but also an outstanding organizer of the humanities in Uzbekistan. They soon became friends.

In 1950, having headed the laboratory for the study of Karakalpak folk arts and crafts within the framework of the branch of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, M. Nurmukhamedov invited I. Savitsky to work. So he began to collect a collection of folk art as part of his new job duties. Already in 1961, the works of decorative and applied art of Karakalpakstan, collected by Igor Vitalievich, were seen in Moscow at an exhibition timed to ¬coincide with the World Congress of Orientalists. The collection increased, which prompted I. Savitsky and his associates to create a new museum in Nukus - the Museum of Arts, which was opened in 1966.

From the first days of his tenure as director of the museum, Igor Savitsky decided that the exposition would not be similar to the existing ones. As an artist, in addition to traditional art, he offered to exhibit paintings and drawings. And as a person who has worked for many years in archaeological expeditions, he considered it necessary to collect the results of archaeological excavations in the museum. The desire to go beyond the usual framework determined three main directions in the formation of the museum's collection - materials on the archeology of Khorezm and the Aral Sea region, the traditional arts and crafts of the peoples inhabiting this region, and the fine arts of the 20th century.

One of the most interesting parts of the museum 's extensive archaeological collection is the collection of ossuaries . These are attributes characteristic of the funeral rite, which researchers associate with Zoroastrianism, which was widespread -in Central Asia before the advent of Islam. According to some sources, it was Ancient Khorezm that was the region where this rite was formed. The Nukus collection contains ossuaries from several early ¬medieval burial grounds, including a number of unique ones. Among them are alabaster ossuaries dating back to the 7th-8th centuries from the necropolis at the site of Tok-kala. One ¬depicts a scene of mourning for the dead during the funeral rite, which, according to the written sources of orthodox Zoroastrianism, was forbidden ¬. Probably, he was one of the characteristic features of the Central Asian version of Zoroastrianism. In addition to the paintings, some of the ossuaries bear black inscriptions for the dead, made in heterographic writing based on the Aramaic alphabet.

The collection of decorative and applied arts of the peoples inhabiting the Aral Sea region formed the basis of the exposition of the new museum, which collected works of art and ethnographic products that gradually went out of use. It can be said without exaggeration that I. Savitsky saved many unique works of art of the Karakalpak people: jewelry, traditional clothes, household items. One of the iconic items of Karakalpak ethnography is the saukele , the headdress of the bride. Researchers believe that about ten such headdresses have been preserved in the museums of the world, and one of the best is in Nukus. In the traditional clothes of Karakalpak women, the kimeshek cape is widespread , which is an ethnic, social and age indicator. The museum collection has a unique bride's dress kok koylek , dating from the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries.

The well-deserved fame of the museum is given by an extensive collection of jewelry that played an important role in women's attire - pectorals, bracelets, earrings, amulets, special rings that adorned a woman's right nostril, and much more.

At the same time, the museum is world famous for its collection of fine art of the 20th century. When I. Savitsky just started collecting paintings and drawings, it was hard to imagine that this collection would be one of the most interesting for studying the fine arts of Russia and Central Asia of the last century. Undoubtedly, its orientation gives it special value. Igor Vitalyevich, understanding how the history of art is written and what role museum collections play in this process, began to form a collection of works by artists who, for certain reasons, were not purchased by large museums.

Russian art of the early 20th century knows a large number of excellent artists and interesting art associations, which in the early 1930s, for political reasons, turned out to be unclaimed and fell out of sight of the general public. Over time, some of these names and associations were extracted from oblivion and made a splash in the artistic life of the world. The Russian avant-garde was successfully heard in leading museums and took pride of place in their permanent exhibitions. The value of the Nukus collection lies in the fact that it presents the works of not only the most famous avant-garde artists of the beginning of the last century, but also those who found themselves in the shadows, whom art critics did not write about and whose works can now be seen primarily in Nukus.

An equally interesting page in the history of fine arts is the work of artists who worked in Central Asia in the first half of the last century. I. Savitsky showed amazing insight and collected in the museum the works of Central Asian artists who worked in the avant-garde manner, which few people paid attention to before him. Thus, the collection of the museum included the works of artists that make up the most interesting phenomenon in the history of fine arts of the 20th century - "Turkestan avant-garde".