Prominent artist Gogi Aleksi-Meskhishvili opens art school in Tbilisi

Renowned Georgian set designer and artist Georgi (Gogi) Aleksi-Meskhishvili has opened a specialist art school at the Shota Rustaveli State Drama Theatre.

Georgia’s Minister of Culture and Monument Protection Mikheil Giorgadze attended today’s opening ceremony of the Modern Theatrical Art School.

The facility will offer training in three-dimensional painting, drawing and working with models. It will be free to study at the art school and the costs will be covered by the Ministry of Culture.

Aleksi-Meskhishvili has had an extremely successful career – from 1971 to 1995 he was the chief set designer for the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi, and from 1986 to 1995, also for the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre where he provided costumes for more than 200 productions.

Many of his shows toured internationally and in 1996 he was hired as a professor of stage design at Dartmouth College in the United States. Since 2001 he has been consistently collaborating with the Synetic Theatre in Washington, DC.

His costumes and sets have been described as "handsome" and "imperially elegant" by The New York Times, "highly stylized and innovative" by The Washington Post and "characterful" by New York magazine.

Over the years Aleksi-Meskhishvili has also designed sets and costumes for the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Dusseldorf Dramatic Theater, the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki, the Habima National Theatre in Tel Aviv and more.

He has received many awards for his talents, including the 2003 Overall Excellence in Design award for Host and Guest at The New York International Fringe Festival, and the European Film Award (Felix) for the 1988 film Ashik Kerib, directed by Sergei Paradjanov. He represented Georgia at the 1999 Venice Biennale.

Aleksi-Meskhishvili is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and an honorary citizen of Tbilisi, Georgia.