Reference
Of Elza Naiil Nafikova
Creative Activity.
Elza Nafikova is a universally gifted artist: in her art she displays an equivalent interest both to painting and printing graphic techniques.
She obtained a degree in classical arts at Ufa’s State University of Education (1991-1996).
Since 1999 she has been an active participant of art exhibitions. Her artworks have been presented in international art-contests and exhibitions in Spain, Romania, Сzech Republic, Belgium, Slovenia, Turkey and England. In 2004 she was awarded as a participant of “White Nights”, The Second Independent International Biennale of graphic arts in Saint-Petersburg by the Biennale and by the Modern Graphics Development fund.
In 2003 she took part in the First Republican Contest of Young Artists of the Republic of Bashkortostan and was awarded a special prize by the international public organization “Culture Protection League”. By the contest results she became a member of Young Artists and Art Critics Association at the Regional Branch of the Russian Artists Union.
Her intensive creative activity as a painter and a print-graphic artist is combined with her interest to interior and exterior design and with her teaching activity: in 2004-2005 she taught drawing at the Architectural faculty of the Bashkir State Construction College.
Elza Nafikova is one of the most gifted and brilliant artists of Bashkortostan. This summary is confirmed by yearly progress of her creative activity that is a demonstration of her artistic flexibility. The flexibility, in its turn is not possible without a clear programme, which is none other than the expression of the author’s world outlook which dictates the logic of the development of stylistic and imaginative lines. In this sense E.Nafikova is uncommonly consistent and devoid of a pictorial epatage which is frequent among many young artists and which often covers a common absence of skill.
In her paintings Elza Nafikova declared her inclination to a metaphoric, symbolic solution of the image; stylistically her manner represented some symbiosis of plasticity techniques – both realistic and expressionistic.
Nafikova’s linocuts have quite a number of artistic merits which are indicative of both her professional skill and harmonious worldview, which is in uninterrupted progress. First of all, Nafikova is a master of quite a few artistic methods: a dark plain is enriched by a variety of shading, linear «moves», points in contrast with the expressiveness of the white which, in its turn, emphasizes the silhouette of the black. Secondly, each her print is notable for its compositional organization : a composition centre is easily correlated with a semantic centre, stressed by the contrast between black and white colors, for all that, Nafikova is devoid of any, even slight, temptation to use in her works of art the principle of illustrativity: it is crucial to her to use a compressed, expressive in its plasticity «ascetic» image which due to this composition and plasticity solution possesses the dualities of a sign, a symbol, the content structure of which is known to be multi- layered. Thirdly the image- thematic line of Nafikova’s separate works of art or their whole series is dictated by the same metaphorism of thinking; the content problems of this line are based on eternal moral values, the inner nature of which has characteristics of a philosophical symbolism. These is the creation of the world, love, sky, space, faith, spirit (soul) movement, emotionally- psychological states of a human being, such as memory, sorrow and the pursuit of the unknown.
As we see, Elza Nafikova’s art possesses the qualities of elite art. The logic of the development of a figurative line which assumes an implicit imaginative perspective within the frames of the so-called author’s mythologemes and the mastery level are convincible. Already nowadays Elza Nafikova is a whole- hearted artist who is actively exhibiting and uninterruptedly striving for mastering skill.
Svetlana Ignatenko,
An art critic,
Deputy scientific director
of the Bashkir State
Museum of Art named
after M.V.Nesterov,
a member of the Union
of Arts of Russia,
Honoured Art Worker.
15.11.2005