Azim Azimzade

After his son, Latif, died during the World War II in February 1943, he broke down and wasn’t able to recover. Thereafter, he suffered a heart attack and died four months later on June 15, 1943, in Baku.

The Azerbaijan State Art School in Baku, which he directed during 1932-37, was named after him.

A street in Baku bears his name, while the first house museum opened in Azerbaijan, at Dilara Aliyeva Street, is dedicated to his life and works.

Azimzade was born as Azim Aslan oglu Azimzade on May 7, 1880, in Novkhani village, Absheron peninsula, close to Baku, in a Karbalayi Aslan family.

His father, Aslan, was a stone cutter and farmer, but switched to oil industry after it started booming.

He was admitted into a madrasa, a local Muslim school, at the age of eight, but he started making drawings instead of reciting his Quran lessons, which is considered a sinful deed, and hence was beaten up by his father.

He was enrolled into a Russian-Tatar school, with the support of his grandmother. However, due to his father’s pressure of pursuing a job, he only completed primary education and did not study further.

At the age of 15, he went to work in a mill, owned by Aghabala Guliyev, where he came across Russian painter Durov, who encouraged him to study fine arts. But due to lack of money, he failed to get any formal education in arts.

He took up freelancing to pursue a career in arts and sent his drawing ‘Irshad’s Client’ to the newly-launched, Molla Nasraddin, by writer-democrat Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, in 1906. The drawing was published in the magazine.

He contributed regularly to the magazine and also started sending his compositions to other magazines in Baku - some being Baraban (Drum), Bij (Trickster), Mezeli (Funny), Kelniyyet, and Babayi-Amir.

He focused mainly on caricatures and satirical drawings inspired from everyday events, but later expanded in other areas of fine arts, namely, book illustrations, stage design, and newspaper and magazine graphics during 1920s and 1930s.

His major breakthrough came in 1920 when he was appointed as head of the art department at the Republic’s Education Commissariat. Thereafter, he became the chief artist of Communist, the most popular Azeri newspaper, in 1922.

From 1922 onwards, Molla Nasraddin magazine’s edition was a renewed and that led to a productive collaboration of Mammadguluzadeh and Azimzade. Eventually, he became the magazine’s chief artist.

His 56 colored illustrations for the anthologies of Azerbaijani poet, Mirza Alakbar Sabir, titled ‘Hop-hop Name’ for the 1915 and 1922 editions, became one of his most memorable works.