LONDON.- Sotheby’s announces that it will exhibit unique pieces of Azeri art from 17 – 19 February as part of the Buta Festival 2015. The work of Soviet era painter, Javad MirJavadov, who was born in Baku and worked in Moscow during the 60s, 70s and 80s, will be on show to the British public for the first time.

Described as “an outstanding Azerbaijani artist of the twentieth century”, MirJavadov’s work is bright and bold, holding hidden-symbols and subtext. Many of the recurring motifs seen in his large works, which were once banned in Azerbaijan, are inspired by traditional Azeri carpets.

Having graduated from the Baku Art School in 1949, MirJavadov spent a number of years in Leningrad. There he managed to secure a position at the State Hermitage Museum as a manual labourer and gain access to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, which at that time, left the storerooms only to be shown to Soviet cultural officials as examples of a degenerate bourgeois ideology.

The exhibition, which also includes a selection of traditional Azeri carpets from the Azerbaijan State Museum of Art, has been curated by Farah Pirieva to show the influence of carpets on MirJavadov, and his contemporaries in Moscow and Baku.

The 2015 Buta Festival provides a window to the Azeri Arts in London, offering unique insights into a country that is arousing our curiosity. For further information about the festival, visit www.butafestival.com. Updates about all things Buta can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – butafestival.