Khojakhmet Kongyrkhodzhaevich Khodzhikov was a Soviet Kazakh artist, caricaturist, and illustrator, and one of the pioneers of Kazakh folk art. He was born in 1910, and his father was an educator and scientist, while his mother was a painter and costumer.
During the 1920s, he studied in the Vkhutemas (“Higher Art and Technical Studios”) Russian state art and technical school in Moscow. Its workshops were established by a decree from Lenin. Khojakhmet studied on preparatory courses for the nationals of the Soviet East.
A drawing of Khojakhmet. His brother Kulakhmet has better preserved images, and he appears when you search for Khojakhmet :(
After his studies, he drifted between jobs as an illustrator-caricaturist for newspapers (1928-1930); as a painter for the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan, and the Institute of National Culture; and as the lead art director for Zhambyl Regional Kazakh Drama Theatre named after Abay (although the Drama Theatre wasn’t called that during his tenure there in the 30s), which was in Dzhambul/Aulie-Ata (now called Taraz).
He was repressed in 1938 and only returned to Moscow in 1943. From 1944 to 1953 he worked as the decorator in the kinostudio Kazakhfilm.
His easel works are displayed in the State Museum of Arts named after A. Kasteyev in Almaty, and other art museums and funds. Unfortunately, few of his works are archived online. From the description of the cited encyclopaedia, his work features themes of working labourers and peasants. In his idyllic works, such as “Night in the Fisherman’s Kolkhoz”, “Boats on the Shore”, and “Landscape with Mountains”, he poetically eulogized the simple life of Kazakh auls.
He also authored more than 100 linoprints with satirical depictions of hot topics of the day. It is unfortunate that his work and cultural fingerprint, which was known to the Soviet people of Kazakhstan and the USSR, was just as ephemeral as the Soviet Union itself, and that no publicly-accessible archive exists of his works and that of hundreds of other excellent Soviet artists and producers.
Some of his works:
“In A Yurt”
The aforementioned “Mountain Landscape”
“Zhambyl with the Red Army Soldiers”
“Before the Storm”
