A solo exhibition of national artist Vugar Muradov entitled Formula of Colours will open on June 3.

Organized by Azerbaijan Culture and Tourism Ministry the exposition includes about 80 paintings and graphic works of the artist. Formula of Colours is the 6th personal exhibition of the artist.

Muradov throughout the evolution of his career develops subtle visual strategy of the sensual sign which turns into sign of the deep feeling running freely through the soul of every sensitive spectator in the best works of the talented and original master. It is precisely this fact that one can explain such widespread popularity of Muradov painting among very different layers of the population of our country, and not only in our country – the representatives of foreign countries buy many works of the Azerbaijan painter with pleasure: significant part of the creative heritage of the artist has been now outside of Azerbaijan, in the private collections of various virtuosities and connoisseurs of art.

The main feature of Muradov’s painting is his commitment to the tradition of plane, sign and symbolic images: within the frame of his art work the artist traces the dynamics of the object’s transformation into his sign-symbol. The artist has little interest in picture subject and its ideological (and narrative) content which is possible to retell by words. He is interested in the formal interpretation of the theme on the plane of the canvas, transformation of the familiar three-dimensional image into two-dimensional sign image-message.
So now a number of the brilliant masters of modern Azerbaijan painting including Muradov adopt this commitment to the pictorial plane and sign. But we note one fundamental consideration when we talk about tradition we should take into account that the case is either decorative-applied art (carpet, ceramics, embossing and etc.) or graphic arts (Tabriz miniature school).

But the painting as art form has own specificity - the surface of the canvas covered with paint layer and specifically designed by brush strokes and preserved the traces of “vivid brushes” on it. In the painting the sign and symbolic manner of working risks to turn the canvas into dry and rational surface of the conceptual work or in the decorative luxury object that is taken now only as design element. Muradov overcomes successfully these difficult challenges and dangers of the craft. It is quite impossible to call his painting conceptual. It is far from decorative extravagances of the pure design formalism. Confidently having pictorial mastery of the western school of fine art the artist combines harmoniously the softness in his work and sometimes sweeping manner of the light-color interpretation of canvas with planar solution of composition and image objects.

The talented artist born in 1967 is one of the iconic figures of modern painting of Azerbaijan. His graduated from the Azim Azimzade State Art School in 1986. He is a member of the Artists Union, Caricaturists Union and the Azerbaijan Photographers Association.

His pictures are well known not only in Azerbaijan, but far beyond its borders. He participated at the international exhibitions in Russia, the U.S., Turkey, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Luxemburg, Iran and etc.