Niyaz Najafov — Francis Bacon ? Edvard Munch ? Niyaz Najafov ! — Nikki Diana Marquardt Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 10 → September 4, 2013

Lorenzo Belenguer of the Huffington Post proposes that the self-taught artist Niyaz Najafov is Francis Bacon’s successor… a well-deserved accolade.

Pictorially his raw crude lurid portrayals remind us of Bacon’s extraordinary renderings. However that is his departure point from the master. Najafov relates and suggests a depth of human emotion and suffering that is profoundly disturbing. He extrapolates this state of being to its extreme and at the same time there is a kind of lightness and humor to it. Mankind at its best and at its worst are equally demonstrated in these astonishing paintings.

Najafov is far removed from the cold and calculated conceptual renderings of contemporary art we are used to. His paintings, portrayals and renderings fling the viewer back to his unrelenting and inexorable human condition. Troubling and disturbing.

Here Najafov meets another master of Weltschmerz Edvard Munch. Existential angst is the key to his work. he burrows down to hell and resurfaces with a hint of a smile. He treats banal subject matter with raw intensity, portraying humanity in a fragile and hopeless state which brings to mind Sisyphus and his unremitting struggle. That said Najafov is a master painter with a dark palette. His work perfectly executed with passionate knife and brush strokes evoking even in the formal appreciation an exceptionally emotional gravity and profundity.

Born in 1968, Baku, Azerbaijan, Najafov currently resides and works in Baku and Paris.