Geysar Kashiyeva: First professional artist of Azerbaijan

Source: AzerNews

The 120th anniversary of Azerbaijani artist Geysar Kashiyeva was marked on June 7. Being the first professional artist in the history of Azerbaijan, Kashiyeva made an invaluable contribution to the Azerbaijani art and culture.

Kashiyeva was born in Tbilisi, where she was a student in the art class of the Caucasus Artistic Society, and became the first Azerbaijani painter to receive professional education. Her teachers were famous German artists such as Oscar Shmerling and Carl Zummer.

The early stage of her creative activity was related to the Transcaucasian Muslim women's charity organization, where she had worked with posters, billboards and invitation cards.

Her first works, including portraits and scenic landscapes such as "Types of Nikolai Gogol," "Portrait of N. Goncharov," "Muslim intellectual," "Lakeside", "Baba Yaga", etc. were done mainly in watercolor, black ink, pencil and charcoal.

Before World War I started, she met her husband, Shirin Bey Kesamanski.

The war had separated them for some time: Shirin Bey left, and returned to Tbilisi only two years thereafter. In 1918, they moved to Baku. Unfortunately, Kesamanski died in 1919, and Geysar-khanim was left alone with a little child.

After Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established Geysar-khanim returned to work with women, participating in the cultural life of the newly created republic.

In the 1930s her family lived in a beautiful house designed in the barocco style, where women's club was situated. Geysar-khanim was the head of the fine arts department, and taught girls who were studying there.

Kashiyeva then made original illustrations for the popular magazine Eastern Woman.

Albums with the original works of the artist are kept in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Azerbaijan.

Kashiyeva died in 1972.