Georgian artist, inventor David Kakabadze celebrated by Google Arts and Culture

Painter, art researcher and technological pioneer David Kakabadze, one of Georgian art’s most important figures, is now highlighted as part of a Google Arts and Culture display about inventors from across the world.

Kakabadze’s 1920s work on a glassless stereo cinematograph has earned him a spot in Once Upon a Try, an online exposition celebrating inventions and achievements by personalities including aviator Amelia Earhart, scientist Nikola Tesla and astronomer Isaac Newton.

The scientific work of the Georgian painter is presented with a slideshow David Kakabadze: Experiments With Art and Technology, with brief facts about his ideas on the technology and biographical notes on the avant-garde creative.

Kakabadze is only Georgian inventor featured in Once Upon a Try, while Georgia is the first country from the South Caucasus to have its inventor selected for the Google project.

The Google Arts and Culture feature for Kakabadze is centred around his invention of glassless stereo cinematograph. Photo: Art Palace.

Born in 1889, Kakabadze studied natural sciences at the St. Petersburg University in Tsarist Russia before launching work on a new type of stereo cinematograph camera.

Developed by him circa 1922, the device stood out for doing away with special spectacles that had been used with cinematograph models in the decades before. The inventor patented the piece of hardware in eight countries across Europe and beyond.

With images shot separately for each eye were perceived through the cinematograph in a way that constructed them with depth of volume, producing a stereoscopic effect.

The Google Arts and Culture slideshow also tells the story of how Kakabadze was ultimately denied the original authorship for the invention by Soviet authorities, as a perceived payback for his “freedom of creativity”.

The online display on the artist and researcher at the Google platform was created using collections preserved at Tbilisi’s Art Palace museum, the first venue in Georgia featured at the online repository of artists and their legacy from across the world.

Other entries for Georgian creatives and collections presented by Art Palace on the platform include displays for contemporary artist Tamara Kvesitadze, theatre designer Petre Otskheli and Georgian costumes preserved at the venue.