Kind of activity: artist

Years of life: August 30, 1888 – March 18, 1980

Creative biography: prominent artist, painter, pupil of old Kazan school, Alexander Erastovich Tyulkin spent much of his life living in Ufa (he was born on  August 30, 1888 and died August 18, 1890,buried on the Southern cemetery of Ufa) and most of his works are dedicated to this city. 

From his first etudes, Tyulkin began to develop his own theme, which he did not changed and further — poetic images of his native land — Ufa city. And the suburb interested him first of all. He lived in a small house on a steep bank of the river in Arhiereyka district. The river, ravines, pier, the rests of Ufa Kremlin and in the old days a magnificent Troitsk cathedral — all this was dear to the artist. Here during the time of his childhood and youth, Russian culture, speech and orthodox belief originally intertwined with customs, traditions, dialect of Tatars and Bashkirs — Muslim part of the population.

Images of Ufa became the main topic for the artist and a source of deep experiences throughout all his creativity. In early years he was fascinated by them in such a way that other motives did not appear till the middle of 30-s. In the first decades of the XX-th century he wrote such works, as «Small House on a Summer Residence» (1919), «Hydrangeas» (1920), «Blossoming Windows» (1924), «Houses in a Ravine» (1928). Simple motives of a provincial life badly fit into the concept of «forward development of the Soviet art», and this circumstance for a long time prevented him from official recognition. In the early thirties Tyulkin went for etudes to industrial centres of Ural Mountains (Beloretsk, Magnitogorsk, Zlatoust), hardly later — in the area of the first oil fields of Bashkiria — Ishimbay. Here he wrote one of the best and characteristic works of those years «The First Ishimbay Derrick» (1938). In 40 — 60 years, the artist created a number of compositions of the historical and everyday plan: «Pushkin among Bashkirs» (1947), «In the homeland of Nesterov» (1946), «the Holiday on suburb» (1946), «Lenin in Ufa» (1961). For his long life, Alexander Tyulkin created more than 300 picturesque canvases reflecting immemorial beauty of his native land, the people’s history. His pictures «The Log hut of Salavat», «the Bashkir honey», «Shihans near Ufa» received wide popularity. In 1975 in Moscow, the exhibition of Alexander Erastovich took place.

He gave much effort to pedagogical and public work; almost 30 years he was the teacher at the art department of the Bashkir State Technical School of Arts (later — Schools of arts). He brought up the whole generation of Bashkir artists. Among them there are nowadays his known and recognized pupils: Boris Domashnikov, Ahmat Lutfullin, Alexander Burzyantsev, Feodor Kascheyev, others. In 1937-1944, he was the chairman of the board of the Union of Artists of BASSR. Residents of Ufa carefully keep the memory of this wonderful artist. The House-museum of the artist is opened in the capital. Due to pupils of Alexander Erastovich, his widow Antonina Nikolaevna the house where he had lived avoided demolition. The remarkable collection of still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits was saved. For inhabitants of Bashkortostan the Tyulkin’s name — is ranked with Aksakov and Nesterov. It is a part of culture of old Ufa, a part of history of our republic.