Rasim Babayev was an iconic figure in post-Soviet art and a pioneer of the Azerbaijani Avant-Garde movement. Although predominantly focused on painting, Babayev expressed his vision in sculpture, on monumental murals and mosaic panels, on painted ceramics, and work in papier-mâché. Using the language of metaphor to create symbolism—reality knotted with fiction—the ancient Persian false god Div, or Daeva, was a significant muse, depicted in a large portion of his works. As a fictional creature from folklore, he considered it to be a personification of human nature.
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