Tbilisi's Baia Gallery celebrating prominent 20th century painter, set designer Elene Akhvlediani
The exhibition of works by Akhvlediani is part of a Baia Gallery series focusing on select artists while also providing a backdrop of the art scene of their era through their contemporaries. Photo via Baia Gallery.
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A Tbilisi gallery is hosting an exhibition of "unique" and less-known works by Elene Akhvlediani, a major figure of the 20th century Georgian art scene, on a backdrop of her contemporaries in the era.
At the downtown Baia Gallery, the popular and widely recognised artist is highlighted along with 17 other creatives of the past century - from pioneering David Kakabadze and Kirill Zdanevich to the popular set designer Petre Otskheli and painter Vera Pagava.
The showcase of works of the Akhvlediani, born in Georgia's east in the late 19th century and becoming known for her colourful and intricate detailing of both urban and countryside landscapes across the country, comes through a selection of her paintings from private collections.
It is also part of the gallery's Artists and Their Era project, a 2019-launched initiative of bringing selected creatives to the spotlight while providing a background context of their time through a selection of works by their contemporaries.
The selection is the latest in the displays hosted over the recent years to celebrate Akhvlediani, who studied drawing in Tbilisi in the 1910s before travelling to Paris on a scholarship awarded to her in the 1920s, the decade that saw many of the most notable artists from around the world converge in the French capital.
Elene embroidered the unique wonders of the architectural view of old Tbilisi on canvas[,] producing its artistic image.
At the same time, [the] landscapes [...] neither present archaeological sketches of the city's architecture nor offer us explanatory images of ethnographic exhibits. They show the portraits of the city and its artistic and decorative interpretation
- art historian Leo Rcheulishvili on Elene Akhvlediani
Featured in exhibitions at venues like the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, Akhvlediani brought to the displays her recognised themes of Georgian locations, produced in France based on sketches she had made back in Georgia.
Following reviews on Akhvlediani's paintings by French press, in 1926 her work found a more prominent space though the maiden personal display at the Quatre Chemins Gallery, with visitors including Pablo Picasso.
Returning to Georgia in the second half of the 1920s, Akhvlediani worked to produce set design at the Marjanishvili Theatre, one of the most prominent Georgian troupes, with the venue providing the grounds for her fruitful collaboration with theatre director Kote Marjanishvili, a prominent personality of the Georgian professional stage art.
Her work in painting and set design led to recognition of her work in the subsequent decades, with Akhvlediani awarded the titles of the Honoured Artist and People's Artist of the Georgian Soviet Republic in 1946 and 1960 respectively.
In the recent years, her legacy has been marked by a number of exhibitions and events, from a five-month display of paintings by Akhvlediani and Niko Pirosmani at the Sighnaghi Museum in 2017, to a series of online talks that celebrated Georgian women artists last month.
The display Elene Akhvlediani and Her Era is on at Baia Gallery, located at 19a Pavle Ingorokva Street in Tbilisi, through February 22.