Museum State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan named after I.V.

The State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan named after I.V. Savitsky is one of the biggest art museums in Uzbekistan. According to experts’ opinions, the museum has the second and the most important collection of paintings and drawings of Russia of the first half of the 20th century after the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

The Museum of Art in Nukus was established on February 5, 1966 by the decision of the Government of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, and in May 1966 received its first visitors. At that time, the museum was located on the second floor of the building of the Museum of Local Studies (Karl Marx Street 2). Igor Vitalievich Savitsky, who became its first director and was instrumental in creation of the new museum. The scientist, public figure and friend M. Nurmukhamedov supported I.Savitsky’s initiative of the museum establishment. The head of Karakalpakstan in the 1960s K.Kamalov contributed to the foundation of the museum, having solved its administrative issues.

The history of the museum is bound up with the life and work of its founder I.V. Savitsky.

IV Savitsky was born on August 4, 1915 in Kiev in the family of the lawyer Vitaliy Viktorovich Savitsky and Vera Timofeevna Florinskaya. From his childhood, he took a great interest in drawing. In the early 1920s, the Savitsky family moved to Moscow. There Igor received private tuition from artists. In 1934-1936 he studied at the graphic department of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. In 1936-1938 continued his education at the Moscow Regional Art Pedagogical School of Fine Arts in memory of the uprising of 1905, and then in 1936-1941 the department of monumental painting at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Artists. In 1941 Savitsky entered the graphic department of the Moscow Art Institute. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War, together with the institute, he was evacuated to Samarkand. Thus happened his first acquaintance with Central Asia which had an influence to his further life. In 1945 Savitsky graduated from the institute and was enrolled in the Union of Artists of the USSR. From 1950 to 1956, he worked as an artist in the Khorezm archaeological-ethnographic expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by Professor S.P. Tolstov. In 1956 I.V. Savitsky moved from Moscow to Nukus. Here he was employed in the laboratory of applied arts at the Karakalpak branch of the Academy of Sciences of the UZSSR. This gave him a chance to begin an extensive activity of collecting works of folk applied art in the region. In addition to collecting activity, Savitsky painted a lot and helped local artists. The establishment of an art museum had been implementation of Savitsky's idea of ​​opening a cultural center in Nukus and in Karakalpakstan as a whole. From the moment when the museum received its first visitors in May 1966, Savitsky devoted himself entirely to museum. Good art education, great taste, intuition and perseverance helped I.V. Savitsky, over the years of his work as a director, to assemble a unique collection including the archeological artefacts of Ancient Khorezm art, objects of folk applied art of  Karakalpakstan, as well as paintings and graphics of artists of Russia and Uzbekistan from the 20th century.

In 1984 I.V. Savitsky died in Moscow hospital. He bequeathed to bury himself in Nukus, which was done. In the same year, the museum was given the name of the founder.

The selfless work of I.V. Savitsky was highly appreciated by the government of Uzbekistan. In 2002, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Republic of Uzbekistan "Buyuk Khizmatlari Uchun" (For Distinguished Public Services).

I.V. Savitsky always dreamed that the museum could be visited not only by local residents, but also by art lovers from all over the world. Today his dreams of "visitors from Paris" and a specially designed building for the museum have come true.