Karaite Images in Bari Egiz’s Art

Abstract

His article analyzes Karaite images in the works of the sentimentalist Bari Egiz. Egiz’s favorite genre was portrait, in which he always placed the images of people who were in close contact with him, his soulmates. The artist performed his pictorial and graphic works using different techniques: oil, pastel, watercolor, lead pencil, charcoal. The first Karaite portrait of the artist’s sister Vera Egiz was drawn in 1905, after that there were some ethnographic portraits during his trip to the Crimea (Dzhuft Calais 1910-1911). Living as an emigrant in Turkey, Egiz drew three works about the Karaites. The period of his residence in Lithuania (1938-1940) was the most fruitful. In that period, he created the most professional paintings of famous Karaite historical figures and of his Karaite friends. In the closing stages of his life, Egiz drew five Karaite portraits.