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Baki Urmanche

Baki Urmanche is a celebrated artist of Tatarstan and the Russian Federation, an Honored Artist of Kazakhstan, and a laureate of Gabdulla Tukay in Tatarstan. Baki Idrisovich Urmanche was born February 23, 1897, in the village of Kul Cherkene, now the Buinsky Region of Tatarstan, and lived a most fruitful life. He was the fourth child, the first son, and grew up in the happy family village mosque with Imam Idris and the skilled embroiderer, Mahjoub Urmanche. He had six sisters and two brothers. Embroidery, weaving, painting patterns, and craft classes were integral to the Urmanche family. He painted and sculpted from early childhood. At ten years, he came to Kazan, already with the desire to learn to draw well. Urmanche traveled around the country. In his youth he was a miner in the Urals, a teacher, and during the First World War he served in Central Asia.

Only after the October Revolution in 1918, while working in Glazov as a school inspector, he received his first drawing lessons at a local art studio.

He was at the forefront of Tatar professional art. He is the first artist from the Tatars to receive higher vocational education, first in the Kazan free art workshops, which he entered in 1919, and then in Moscow. In Moscow, Urmanche studied two disciplines, sculpture in the studio of A. Golubkinoi, and painting with Shevchenko.

In 1926, he graduated from the Institute and returned to Kazan. He worked as a teacher at art schools, and created and organized his own network of art and ceramic workshops, wrote articles, did illustrations, lectures and led an art section in the House of Tatar Culture.

In 1929, Baki Urmanche was hit by the first wave of Stalinist repressions and was accused of nationalism, along with his younger brother Hadi, and was thrown in the Solovki Special Purpose Camp. He was able to return in five years. In Kazan, the old life was gone, and the artist decided to move to Moscow. He eventually joined the Artists' Union and was sent on a creative assignment to the Bashkir oil fields and mines of Donbass and his work was finally recognized.

In 1934, he took part in the first exhibition of young Russian artists.

In 1937, the artist, as a member of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists, was invited to work at the National Agricultural Exhibition.

From 1941, B. Urmanche lived and worked in Almaty (Kazakhstan). Many of his best painting and drawing works were created during the time the artist was there, including portraits, landscapes, still lifes, etc.

In 1952 he moved to Samarkand and Tashkent.

In 1958, after years of wandering in the territories, the White Sea, and Central Asia, Urmanche worked on a project depicting a decade of Tatar art and literature in Moscow. Laying the foundation for a new Faculty of Sculpture at the Tashkent Institute of Art, 60 year-old Urmanche went home to Kazan.

Returning to his home was a powerful impulse for creative inspiration, a catalyst, which gave rise to a new quality to his work.

In Kazan reside his main sculptures & portraits of Tatar cultural figures.

In 1976, he created in Kyrlai, the home village of the poet Gabdulla Tukay, a unique Tukay complex in which everything, from the building of the museum and the sculpture in front, to the decoration and incarnations of characters created by the poet into a park. All of it was created from the ideas and works of Urmanche.

Baki Idrisovich Urmanche died on August 6, 1990. He lived for ninety three years and died at the height of his fame. His life became a testament to Tatar art.

Last updated: 29 November 2012, 14:18