Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Jangar Epic: Jubilee Exhibition of Kalmykia’s First Professional Artists

The article examines the emergence of Kalmykia’s professional arts activities in the 1930s. Goals. It seeks to review formation stages of the ethnic school, determine its essentials and local features as part of Soviet artistic culture. In this regard, a fundamental research problem is that the vast majority of local pre-war visual arts works had been lost during the Great Patriotic War and Kalmyk deportation (1943–1956). Materials and Methods. Considered are works of Kalmykia’s first professional artists ― such as I. Nuskhaev, L. Ochirov, R. Bogoslavsky, etc. ― inspired by epic heritage and realia of Socialist construction. The study employs a historical-and-cultural approach which determines the use of sources (archival papers, eyewitness reports, available pictorial works and studies); characterizes the pre-war life of the republic and its integration into Socialist cultural environment. Results. The paper reveals a central event of the era, examines the preparation and arrangements of the 1940 jubilee exhibition to celebrate 500 years of the Kalmyk heroic epic of Jangar. Conclusions. Cultural heritage proved most essential to the formation of Soviet Kalmykia’s pictorial arts trend, central to the latter being traditions of Russian realistic art represented by ethnos-related works of V. Favorsky and his colleagues.

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