Izzat Nazarovich Klychev (10 October 1923 – 12 January 2006) was a Soviet and Turkmen painter, incumbent member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR and honorary corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts. Biography Early years Izzat Nazarovich Klychev was born on October 10, 1923 in the village of Yalkim in the Bayram-Ali region of Turkmenistan. Izzat's father Annaklych, a mullah, was an educated man and enlightened teacher who taught children a working model of the solar system with a rotation around the Earth and the moon. In 1933, ten-year-old Izzat was sent to exile from Turkmenistan to northern Kazakhstan, along with his family. Izzat's mother and father perished in the labor camp in front of his eyes. His father, Annaklych Suvkhan Nazar, had graduated from a Muslim high school (known as amadrassa) in Bukhara, and became a school teacher, teaching Quran, arithmetics, geography, natural sciences and history. In 1933, Annaklych and his wife became political prisoners and were sent to exile to the cold Kazakh prairies together with their younger son Izzat. Within a year, both Izzat's mother and father perished in the labor camp. By miracle, Izzat's elder brother Reshit found his orphaned brother and brought him back to Turkmenistan. Teenage years and twenties In 1938, Izzat Klychev became a pupil of a boarding school at the State Art College of Ashgabat, and then continued his education as a student of this institution (1942-1944). In his early years, Izzat's works demonstrate the influence of his teacher, Y.P. Daneshvar, a Russian artist and follower of A.A. Deyneka. His works of this period feature vivid pages of Turkmen pictorial art. And then fate gave me a present… a friendship with my art teacher, Y.P. Daneshvar. Speaking more precisely, at the beginning it was more of a mothering, a tutorship, and only when I grew up Y.P. Daneshvar became a very close friend of mine. In 1942, Izzat Klychev is called up to the Soviet Army in World War II as a field wireman. Awarded several orders and medals, Izzat Klychev celebrates the Victory Day of May 9, 1945 in Berlin, Germany. In 1947, Izzat Klychev is accepted to the Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Among his professors are outstanding painters B.V. Johanson and I.A. Serebrianiy. At Johanson's studio, Izzat creates his graduation work known as «In the Karakum desert», and then successfully defends it in