Aitbayev Salikhitdin is a Kazakh painter, a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR since 1965, an Honoured Art Worker of Kazakhstan, winner of the Lenin Komsomol Prize.

Aitbayev is a native of the city of Kyzylorda. He graduated from the Almaty Art School named after N.V. Gogol. N.V. Gogol where he studied under M. Kenbaev and U. Azhiev.

Aitbayev is one of the brightest figures of Kazakhstani art, whose work was formed in the 1960s. At the All-Union exhibitions, he loudly proclaimed himself the author of compositional canvases in which national tradition was placed within the framework of the modern search for great form. Salikhitdin Aitbayev is a great master of composition and colour. An example of this is the work A Girl at a Yurt – one of the best works made in the 1970s, the most fruitful period of the artist’s creative life.