Who is Jalal Garyaghdi?

Jalal Maharram oglu Garyaghdi (Azerbaijani: Cəlal Məhərrəm oğlu Qaryağdı; 2 June 1914, Shusha, Elisabethpol Governorate, Russian Empire – June 2001 Baku, Azerbaijan) was an Azerbaijani monumentalist sculptor and People’s Artist of Azerbaijan (1960). He was one of the investor monumentalist sculptors of Azerbaijan, along later than Fuad Abdurahmanov.

Jalal Garyaghdi was born on 2 June 1914 in Shusha. He was keen upon painting and modeling in literary years. After graduating from the supplementary school, he was sent to Baku and entered Azerbaijan State College of Arts. Such eminent Russian realist artists as Gerasimov, Pridatok and Kosichkin taught at that moot at the time. The latter had a great role in the build up of Garyaghdi’s amalgamation in landscape painting. While studying at the college, he attended the studios of Yelizaveta Tripolskaya and Pinhas Sabsai. After graduating from speculative in Baku, he entered the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, where he was admitted in the class of a talented sculptor and pedagogue professor Iakob Nikoladze (1976–1951), in 1934. Nikoladze’s teaching system was based on thorough and attentive psychiatry of landscape. He helped Garyaghdi produce the faculty of seeing flora and fauna and giving it aggressive plastic forms. Results of Nikoladze’s system are reflected in earlier works of Garyaghdi. Even during his education, he made a bass-relief of Alexander Pushkin timed to the poet’s anniversary in 1937. After returning to Baku, Jalal Garyaghdi started lively independently. The bas-relief portrait of Shota Rustaveli and sculptural figure of young Stalin were accompanied by his works created in that period. Two-metre high sculpture of a kolkhoz farmer man, which was used in the design of the Gagajukh-chab pipe (a line of Samur-Davachi canal) along later than a monumental statue of a kolkhoz farmer woman by Yelizaveta Tripolskaya and bas-reliefs of Pinhas Sabsai, was one of Garyaghdi’s first monumental works.

The statues Kolkhoz farmer, Vagif, the bas-relief sketch Farhad, cleaving the Bisutun rock, the project of Nizami’s monument, portraits of Stalin, Dzhaparidze and Fioletov – all these works are joined to pre-wartime period. Garyaghdi taught at the Azerbaijan State College of Arts for many years. In 1954, he was awarded considering the honorary title of Honoured Art Worker of the Azerbaijan SSR for his creative activity. Portraits of Bulbul, Rashid Behbudov, Jahangir Jahangirov, Khurshidbanu Natavan, Mirza Alakbar Sabir and Niyazi are considered the best creations of the sculptor. Sculptural portrait of Gara Garayev (1965) is along with the best portrait images in by Garyaghdi. Compositional portraits such as Young girl, Kamancha player, Tar player and others occupy a determined place in Garyaghdi’s creative work. In 1950, the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan announced a contest for the best project of a monument to Vladimir Lenin to be installed at the Government House of Azerbaijan. Jalal Garyaghdi won this contest. The work on the image of Lenin lasted for four years. The sculptor abundantly researched approaches of N. Andreyev, S. D. Merkurov and M. Manizer, who created the best sculptures of Lenin in the Soviet Union. In 1955, the 11-metre bronze sculpture was installed.

In the mid 1950s, Garyaghdi began to work upon a monument to Sabir, an Azerbaijani satirical poet of the nineteenth century which was erected in 1958 in the middle of Baku, in a garden named after the poet replacing a monument of the poet made by Keylikhis in 1922. The bronze sculpture was abundantly harmonized gone its pedestal (architects Ismayilov and Alizadeh). The most significant works of the sculptor, created in the 1970s, were dedicated to participants of October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War. The best of them are the monument to Nariman Narimanov, installed in Baku (1972), the memorial to fallen soldiers in Barda city (1979) and the monument to General Hazi Aslanov, installed in Lankaran – motherland of the twice Hero of Soviet Union, in 1984.

Jalal Garyaghdi died in 2001 and was buried in the Alley of Honor, in Baku.