Tbilisi gallery exhibition a tribute to avant-garde pioneer Kirill Zdanevich

An ongoing display of artwork at Tbilisi's Baia Gallery is marking the legacy of Kirill Zdanevich, a pioneering figure of the early 20th century avant-garde scene within a community of innovating artists in Georgia.

Kirill Zdanevich and His Era opened this week to bring to the fore "interesting and unknown material" on the artist and stage designer who came to be regarded as one of the founders of the Cubo-Futurist scene in Georgia and Russia.

Drawn from collections in Georgia and abroad, the works and material have been curated by Baia Tsikoridze and shed light on the role and influence of Zdanevich in shaping artistic currents in the first decades of the past century, including the flourishing of what became to be known as the "Tbilisi Avant-Garde".

The pioneering figure's ties with western artistic trends even through the Iron Curtain decades in the Soviet era are also a subject tracing his life and, by extension, the exhibition. Organisers' preview said he was "one of the first among the few" who "maintained subconscious contact" with artistic practices abroad during the time period.

Works by Zdanevich are seen on display at Baia Gallery within the exhibition. Photo via Baia Gallery.

Kirill Zdanvich’s art is deeply Georgian and, at the same time, it brings common ideas of various cultural traditions together in itself. In any part of the stormy historical epoch and in any field of art Kirill Zdanevich was always in dialogue with general cultural problematics" - Nana Shervashidze

Born in 1892 in Georgia to a Polish father and a Georgian mother, Kirill and his brother Ilia became recognised for their early interest in avant-garde practices and were credited for their discovery of works by the then-unknown primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani in Tbilisi in 1912.

Zdanevich studied painting and drawing and graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Art before joining formal and informal artist groups and communities in Russia and later Georgia. These included neo-primitivist group Donkey’s Tail and 41°.

Works of the Polish-Georgian artist are brought to Baia Gallery as part of their project Collector: 20th Century Georgian Art. It is set to run at the venue - located at 19A, Ingorokva Street in Tbilisi - through March 3.