Tahir Teimurovitsch Salakhov

When Tahir Salakhov started painting the oil workers of his native Baku around 1960, he stripped out everything that Soviet art was supposed to add. No beaming heroes, no polished sky. His men on the Caspian oil rigs are tired, roughly built, set against slabs of grey, black and hard red, and the work looks as heavy as it was. Repair Men, from 1961, is the picture people point to.

This blunt, unflattering manner became known as the severe style, a wave of younger Soviet painters in the 1960s who turned away from the glossy optimism of the Stalin years. Salakhov, born in Baku in 1928, was one of its leaders.

He was also a portraitist of his friends. His 1960 portrait of the Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev sits him at a white piano, leaning back against a dark void, more nerve than flattery. Salakhov went on to hold high office in the Soviet art establishment for decades, and used the position to bring banned and Western modern artists into Moscow exhibitions before the state was ready for them.