Menart Fair, Paris

solo show Niyaz Najafov, Azerbaidjan

Niyaz is part of a generation of artists who have found renewed support on the burgeoning Azerbaijani art scene. In the ever-expanding world of contemporary art, Azerbaijan is one of the new frontiers where the fall of the Soviet Union has given rise to a new and rich cultural life with international repercussions.
Self-taught artist born in 1968 in Bakou, Niyaz conquered the international scene in 2009, during his participation in the Venice Biennale. Niyaz paints self portraits,  landscapes and flowers. This skindeep being frantically paints the perpetual struggle of a fragile humanity, a reflection of his own existential anguish. Niyaz systematically works on brush drawing effects, figuratively. Great virtuoso of color, he plays on the pictorial and the figural to give this musicality so characteristic to his painting. In the series Flowers, taking a traditional pictorial formalism, he paints roses in improbable vases on any support that he finds: from traditional canvas to pieces of wood, cardboards or plastic. Throughout 2016 to date, he has paintied on single-size invitation cards from various exhibitions. By night, he sticks these flowers on various corners of streets in Paris, or parasite other's exhibitions. Settled in France for about ten years, his works have been exhibited in many countries, from Paris to Moscow, Venice, London, Berlin, Geneva or Sidney, and figure in several national and international collections.