Today in the Engineering building of the State Tretyakov Gallery exhibition opens Lado Gudiashvili "Paris years. Presented more than 60 drawings and paintings

Today, 17 November, in the Engineering building of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Lavroushinsky, 12, 2 nd floor) will be the opening of the exhibition Lado Gudiashvili «Paris years».

The personal exhibition of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Georgia, Lado (Vladimir) Gudiashvili Davidovich (1896-1980) represents more than 60 drawings and paintings by the artist's Paris period, from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery and the collection of Iveta and Tamaz Manasherovyh . Most of the work will be first shown to the public.

Lado Gudiashvili moved from Tbilisi to Paris in the autumn of 1919. Almost immediately, the artist has frequented the famous "Beehive" and café "Rotonda". He was friends with A. Derain, F. Leger, F. Masereel, Goncharova and , and was familiar with A. Modigliani and Picasso. Paris debut Gudiashvili began with participation in the 13th Exhibition "Autumn Salon", where he showed four pictures: "Idyll", "carousing in the Garden of Eden", "Toast at dawn", "spree kinto with a woman." After the interior work twenty-four Gudiashvili received rave press reviews. Following public recognition and commercial success followed: now "whoopee with a woman and three more picture Gudiashvili bought the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga with the intent to later transfer them to the collection of the Prado Museum. Their favorite characters, pictures Gudiashvili were Quinto (street vendors, regulars dukhans) and karachoheli (slogger craftsmen who wore chohu - black clothes) and related scenes libation, feasting, merry-making and horse riding. In the years of living in Paris Gudiashvili invariably turned to memories of the patriarchal Georgian style of the sudden change in 1921 the new Soviet regime.

Gudiashvili lived in Paris for six years. All these years he was accompanied by professional success: the gallery staged solo exhibitions, he eagerly invited to participate in collective expositions, discussions and poetry readings, he worked as a theatrical designer. However, many of Gudiashvili 1920 are not devoid of pessimism and melancholy - in part because the artist knew doomed the old Georgian way of life since his youth. Nevertheless, during the realization of a new reality and reappraisal Gudiashvili faithful to the ideal of beauty that is directly linked his work with the tradition of French and Russian Symbolism - the concept and the cult of the Eternal Feminine.

In 1925, when many artists tried to escape from Russia, Lado Gudiashvili the contrary, he returned to Soviet Georgia. He continued to work successfully in his native Tbilisi. In 1928 Gudiashvili became a member of the 16 th Venice Biennale, his work was exhibited in Europe, America and the USSR. Despite the fact that creativity Lado Gudiashvili was well known in the Soviet Union, his solo exhibition was held recently in Moscow in 1958 in the Exhibition Hall of Artists Union of the USSR at the Kuznetsk bridge.

This exhibition is intended to reopen the name of the renowned artist wide audience. Through the collection of works of the Paris period Lado Gudiashvili from the collection of Iveta and Tamaz Manasherovyh made possible the implementation of this exhibition and publication of a unique compilation album, beyond the exhibition catalog. The book brought together prominent critics from different countries: John Boult, professor at the University of Southern California (USA) by one of the first monographs on L. Gudiashvili, an employee of the State Russian Museum - Lydia Zlatkevich professor Luigi Magarotto University of Venice, art historian and journalist, Janine Varna (Paris); scholar of Russian and Georgian literary avant-garde Tatiana Nikolskaya (St. Petersburg) and Tbilisi artist Iliko Zautashvili. Also in the catalog published previously unknown archival materials doparizhskogo (1917-1919) and Paris (1920-1925) periods of the artist's work.

The exhibition is open to the public from November 18, 2009 to January 10, 2010.

Source : Press release of the State Tretyakov Gallery