Modernist Abstract Uzbekistan Fauve Painting. Rough landscape with red fields. Signed indistinctly lower right. Inscribed on back "76 g" and titled "Haydalu Kuk" ("Drive Away") in Uzbek. 

Overall: 13 X 17 in. 

Sight: 7 1/2 X 11 1/2 in. 

Depth: 2 1/2 in. 

#2772 . 

Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country located in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five countries: Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, making it one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth, the other being Liechtenstein. Uzbekistan is a member of the Organization of Turkic States. Uzbek is the majority language, while Russian is widely spoken and understood as the country was under control of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1991. Islam is the predominant religion, and most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims, although the government is constitutional and secular, and the country has transitioned to a market economy since the turn of the century. Although lesser known in the Western World, the Nukus Museum in Karakalpakstan is home to the largest and most diverse collection of avante-garde art from the Soviet era, and contains works from numerous artists throughout the 20th Century who were able to bring unique techniques and different styles into the Bloc that thrived on the fringes of their empire, instead of being squashed closer to Moscow. Ural Tansykbaevich Tansykbayev (1904-1974) was particularly important, as he introduced Fauvism and French Impressionism to the country in the 1920s, and Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov (1886-1957) whose experiments with Cubo-Futurism inspired many in his home country, though he was doomed to obscurity in the rest of Europe and Asia once his work was deemed counter-revolutionary. Today modern Uzbek artists still explore art styles from a century ago, slowly filling the cultural (and literal) desert created on the southern edge of the former Union with their own version of Perestroika.