CESAR   MAMMADOV

Cesar Mammadov (b. 1988, Baku, Azerbaijan) is one of most prominent young Azerbaijani brush masters. He is graduated from Art School named after A.Azimzade (2004-2008) and Academy of Arts of Azerbaijan (2008-2012) and in recent years actively participated in art projects in Azerbaijan and abroad, where his works were exhibited at the most famous exhibition venues. “I love this life with a frenzy of love...” – this line from Vladimir Nabokov’s poem, is most probably the best description of creative belief of artist. In Cesar Mammadov’s paintings joy of existence is combined with friendly interest in the smallest details of life, and the romantic glorification of the beauty of nature goes hand-in-hand with display of creations of human hands on foreground; figuratively, and sometimes in the literal sense of the word.

If sea is depicted, it is full of multicoloured sails, and if it is a city, it is variegated and brightly colored with bright walls, balconies and posters. Even industrial landscapes such as panorama of oil field, under the brush of artist gain a kind of businesslike or modest character, and yet vibrancy is achieved by carefully calibrated balance of clean and bright colours, with muted background nuances. Purity of tones is combined with clarity or even harshness of lines. The artist seems to offer his viewer a fresh look at daily wonders of the world: overflow of sea water, mosaic of beach umbrellas, openwork masts, labyrinths of tiled roofs, perception of which involuntarily turns into “fray at the edges” with aging. These landscapes are neither idealized, nor invented. This is a kind of Traveler’s Diary, because Cesar Mammadov travels a lot. In his canvases Spain, Turkey, France, Italy, cities, mostly maritime towns, ports, with their troublesome daily life appears before us... Cities can be depicted in different ways, but in his canvases they are mostly filled with light and festivity to various extents. They say, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is true.

Confident strokes of his still-life paintings and portraits are sprinkled with same love for life, equally full of light in terms of mood, sometimes pacifically calm, and sometimes bright and playful. Even smile of Her Majesty Queen looks more optimistic than usual in his portrait; by the way, in 2018, it was presented to Elizabeth II during Royal Horse Show Anniversary in Windsor.

Cesar’s drawings look pretty much interesting and rather unexpected contrast his paintings. Drawings are relatively new direction of his oeuvre, but he intends to continue to pay more attention to it. In this technique, Cesar Mammadov continues to remain faithful to landscape genre; however, approach to reflecting reality is somewhat different and the reality acquires huge variety of mood tones with minimum of color shades.

Thus, young artist Cesar Mammadov, having already demonstrated his individuality in the World of Art clearly enough, stays strong in the pursuit of his goals and is quite ready to please his audience with new creative surprises.

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Naila Bannayeva, art critic

Baku, February, 2019