Niko Pirosmani

Niko Pirosmani is both a discovery and a legend. Still unknown to many, he is revered as a national artist in his homeland of Georgia. Pirosmani's portraits and animal paintings created around 1900 in Tbilisi are characterized by a peculiar expressiveness and great sensitivity. His landscapes and everyday scenes incorporate elements of medieval iconography and demonstrate a deep connection to his fellow countrymen. At the same time, the avant-garde recognized a new, radical, and unknown form of painting in Pirosmani's work. Like Henri Rousseau or Marc Chagall, the self-taught artist belongs to the exceptional, hard-to-categorize artists of the early modern period. This catalog showcases Pirosmani's skill through numerous illustrations, highlighting how he makes the sparingly applied colors glow from a dark depth with precise, sketch-like brushstrokes on black oilcloth. Pirosmani was a master of concentration—and a storyteller. As knowledgeably presented in the catalog by Georgian art historians, he was a singular artist, a contradictory figure, and an important part of the art scene in Tbilisi, which was then regarded as the "Paris of the East." Born into a peasant family, Niko Pirosmani (1862 – 1918) moved to Tbilisi in 1870. Occasional jobs and painting portraits or pub signs provided him with a modest income. In 1912, he attracted the attention of Georgian and Russian avant-garde artists, who presented his works a year later in the exhibition "Mischén" (Target) in Moscow alongside Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Marc Chagall. A planned exhibition in Paris was thwarted by the outbreak of World War I. Pirosmani died completely impoverished in 1918. Today, he is considered the most famous artist of Georgia.