Igor Savitsky: Artist, Collector, Museum Founder

by Marinika Babanazarova

Silk Road Media and the Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art named after I.V. Savitsky are pleased to announce the publication of “Igor Savitsky—Artist, Collector, Museum Founder” by Marinika Babanazarova, Igor Savitsky’s successor as Director of the Museum since his death in 1984. Since the early 2000s, Igor Savitsky’s life and accomplishments have earned increasing international recognition. He and the museum he founded in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan in the far northwest of Uzbekistan, have also been the subject of numerous articles in the world’s most important newspapers and magazines, such as El Païs, Le Figaro, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Guardian, and the New York Times, of television programs in Australia, Germany, and Japan, and, most recently, of two full length documentary films . Marinika Babanazarova’s memoir is based on her 1990 graduate dissertation at the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute (Department of Theory and History of Art). It draws upon correspondence, official records, and other documents about the Savitsky family that have become available during the last few years, as well as the recollections of a wide range of people who knew Igor Savitsky personally. As she states in the foreword to this deeply moving and personal narrative . . “I hope this memoir will serve not only as a multifaceted, broad-based portrait of a great man who was my mentor, but also as a tribute to his legacy.” The book’s publication—in separate Russian and English editions—was made possible with the support of several members of the Friends of Nukus Museum, a non-governmental, voluntary organization registered in The Netherlands.