Louisiana revue published in connection with the exhibition of Georgia's most famous artist and avant-garde hero, Niko Pirosmani, (1862-1918), in the spring of 2023. There are only a few sources for the history of Pirosmani, but he is today described as the painter of the Georgian soul, culture and public life. His pictures are straightforward, realistic in their simplicity, originally cropped and are about the humane space where the people are, eat and meet the animals.
The appeal of the images is simple, but also sophisticated because they work. With a few brushstrokes, Pirosmani transformed the everyday into the extraordinary. The portraits have the same intensity as Orthodox icons, and the images of the lion, the deer and the giraffe have something alluring and disturbing about them at the same time. Their eyes are staring at you. The black base color shines through the other colors - just like in the portraits.
Pirosmani lived and worked in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi around the turn of the last century - as a self-taught sign painter and penniless vagabond. It was not until the first two decades of the 20th century that an artistic work unfolded for the urban wanderer with the painting tool in his suitcase. There is both the van Gogh myth and Henri Rousseau in the position he has come to occupy since then.
Pirosmani's entrance into art history is among the few documented stories about the legend. He is discovered as an artist by artists from the avant-garde milieu in Moscow and St. Petersburg, who in the second decade of the 20th century begin to orientate themselves in the direction of expression, artistic practice and traditions that can undercut the hardened tastes of the time. A handful of works by Pirosmani are shown at the very famous exhibition, The Shooting Disc, in 1913.
You understand the avant-garde milieu's sense of Pirosmani, whose images work - without detours. There is a presence, an immediacy, in his universe that has the clear appeal of the sign painter and expresses a great artistic talent.
Dimensions: H: 25.5 x W: 21.0 cm
Pages: 96
Language Danish
Published by Louisiana, 2023