Ali Aidarkulovich Baktygereev

Ali Baktygereev was born on 15 April 1962 in the village of Kulandy on the shores of the Aral Sea, in the Aral district of the Kyzylorda region. He spent his childhood there and studied at the Kulandy eight-year school, where he first showed a gift for art — as a boy he collected chalk stone with his uncle and carved it into small sculptures.

He began his working life as a young teacher at a school in the village of Bozoy (Shalkar district, Aktobe region) from 1980 to 1984, then went on to formal art training: first at the Almaty art school named after N. Gogol (1984–1989), then at the Zhurgenov Almaty State Theatre and Art Institute (1989–1994). As a student he witnessed the December 1986 events in Almaty.

From 1994, for 28 years, Ali Baktygereev taught specialist disciplines at the Tansykbayev Almaty College of Decorative and Applied Arts, training generation after generation of young artists.

Alongside teaching he exhibited widely in Kazakhstan and abroad. He is the author of the composite tapestry cycle "Kazakh Scientists" for the Academic Council Hall of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (1997) and the portrait cycle "Great Kazakh Women" for the Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University (1999), as well as a number of portraits held in the buildings of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Culture and Sport.

In the 2010s his painting turned increasingly toward myth and deep history — Atlantis, Shambhala, the idea of Turan — and from that search came "Saryn" (2015) and "Yellow Tone" (2017), and "Janaza" (Requiem) — a work inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy in Mukagali Makatayev's Kazakh translation, one that the artist himself considered among the most important of his life.

He was a member of the Union of Artists of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a laureate of the international competitions "Zhiger" and "Shabyt," winner and laureate of the republican exhibition "550 Years of the Kazakh Khanate" at the A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts (2015), and laureate of the TURAN International Art Prize (2019). In 2022, by order of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, he received a Certificate of Gratitude for his contribution to the development of fine arts and the spiritual life of Kazakhstan.

Ali Baktygereev died suddenly on 12 October 2023 in his workshop, "Kara Shanyrak." His family, students and colleagues remember him as an artist who never sought fame — only the quiet, continuous work of painting. He is remembered as a veteran of the cultural front who left behind not just a gallery of images, but a whole world carrying the spirit, secrets and wisdom of the steppe.