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eBook - Elena Akhvlediani - a Great Georgian Painter

Biography | Abroad | Tbilisi | Places | Sketch | FULL GALLERY

Biography of Elena Akhvlediani

Elena Akhvlediani, just as the other artists of her generation - David Kakabadze, Lado Gudiashvili and Keto Magalashvili - started her works in the early decades of the twentieth century. These masters' achievements, based on the legacy of national and European cultures, have largely determined the distinctive features of Georgian art and have not lost their importance to this day.

The interests of Akhvlediani were diverse and included painting, drawing, stage and costume design, and book illustration. But she has gone down in the history of Georgian art as, above all, a master of genre and lyrical landscape painting. Especially prominent in her artistic legacy are the views of Tbilisi, the city in which she had lived many years, which she loved as her own, and to the preservation of whose historical peculiarities she had given much of her energies.

The artist's studio, in one of the Tbilisi twisting streets, was indeed a cultural center. The place where artists, actors, musicians, poets and her numerous friends often gathered. The character and inclinations of Akhvlediani had formed in her childhood and had little changed with the passing of time.

Her parents were people out of the common. Her father, Dimity Akhvlediani, born in a poor family, in his youth earned his living by giving private lessons. After finishing secondary school in 1884, he became a student of the Kharkov university medical department. His participation in students' disturbances, arrest and the subsequent expulsion and blacklisting would have deprived him of the opportunity of completing his education, if not for the protection of one of the professors, who supported the talented student.

Dimity Akhvlediani entered the Odessa university, this time the natural sciences department. His works as a student on the structure of the Odessa granite and the origin of oil were met with much interest among specialists and opened up bright prospects to the young man. Nevertheless the love of medicine proved stronger, and, having finished the university, Akhvlediani entered the St. Petersburg military medical academy. Again years of study followed under the guidance of such most prominent specialists as S. Botkin, I. Pavlov and I. Tarkhanov. His studies at the academy completed, he returned to Georgia and wholly devoted himself to his favourite occupation. Purposefulness and will in Dimity Aklvlediani were combined with his natural subtlety, feeling and imagination.

We still have his poems which he dedicated to his wife, Elizabeth Eristavi. They were an excellent couple. Elizabeth, a princess by birth, shared her husband's democratic views and helped him in all his undertakings, including the establishment of a free outpatient clinic. Elizabeth also had to shoulder the family cares: the education of five children, singing lessons, and book reading in the evening. One could often hear Georgian songs sung in their home.

Elena Akhvlediani had a beautiful voice. As it was her dream to become a singer, she intensively studied singing. Having chosen the profession of an artist, she did not give up music. "Indeed, I love music more than all other arts, even my own, " she wrote in one of her letters. But that was later.

Until 1910 the family lived in Telavi. The artist's childhood passed in that quiet, cozy town buried in greenery, which still preserves its somewhat patriarchal aspect. The narrow streets paved with cobble-stone turn and twist among the houses. Little shops and workshops with amusing signboards crowd near the market-place.

In the centre of the town, quite near the place where the parents' house stood, one's attention is attracted by two-storeyed buildings, familiar from the artist's early drawings, with the columns in the neo-classical style below and typically Georgian galleries above them. Old fortress walls rise on the slope of the hill. From there opens a view of the Alazani Valley veiled with light mist, and of the snow-covered peaks of the Caucasus. In her work the artist would repeatedly turn to the town of her childhood.

In Telavi Elena became acquainted with pictorial art. Later on the artist recalled with much warmth her first teacher: "I have known Shalva Kartvelishvili from my childhood. Our families lived close to one another and were very good friends. ... Shalva was my first teacher ... and inspirer in drawing. He was the first to teach me to love and see nature, our people, our monuments and folklore."

When the family went to live in Tiflis, lessons in pictorial art became systematic. The city where the Akhvlediani family now settled was amazing in many respects. The location of Tiflis - in the ravine with tire Kura flowing along its bottom - accounted for its inimitable appearance admired by many.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the features of the Eastern and Western, of the old and new cultures naturally coexisted in Tiflis. That was in evidence everywhere. The strains of the zourna and French chansons were to be heard in the streets. Symbolist and futurist poets recited their poems in artistic cafes, while in the old town one could attend a contest of folk poets and singers. The new ways and styles, increasingly, ousting the traditional elements of culture, made at the same time ever more obvious the necessity of a careful attitude to the latter. A movement for the revival and enrichment of the national Georgian culture, of national art was growing among the progressive Georgian intelligentsia, especially among the youth. Many of the artists and men of letters that matured at that time saw almost a programme in the poem of the young Titian Tabidze:

The rose of Hafiz,

I set in the vase of Prudhomme,

And in Bessika's garden,

Plant the Baudelairian flowers.

Whate'er will catch my eye,

On the way unknown,

Will find its response and measure,

In the Georgian verse.

Archaeological expeditions, which laid the foundations of scientific study of ancient monuments, were being sent. At the same time the first article appeared about the remarkable twelfth-century Georgian goldsmith Beka of Opiza, founder of the Opiza style; it was written by the artist David Kakabadze. The Zdanevich brothers and Michel Le. Dentu discovered in 1912 for the artistic public Niko Pirosmanashvili.

The people with whom the future artist associated in Tiflis were in one way or another connected with this movement, contributing to the preservation and development of traditions of Georgian culture. In the Tiflis gymnasium, of which Akhvlediani was a student, drawing was taught by N. Skli- fosovsky. He noticed the gifted girl and offered her instruction in his studio. The talented teacher enjoyed general respect.

At different times he acted as an instructor of the future masters of Georgian art: the painter Alexander Bajbeuk-Melikyan, the stage designer Irakly Garnrekeli, the draughtsman Sergo Kobuladze, and many others. Attentive and tactful, he knew how to protect and develop the young artists' individuality. But even he was sometimes amazed at the 'obstinacy' of his new pupil, who, listening attentively to her teacher's criticisms, agreed that the colour of the jug in her work was quite different from what it was in reality but continued to do as she wished.

Thus her early independence of artistic thinking, the habit to be guided, above all, by the inner feeling, which seldom deceived her, became one of the important features of Akhvlediani's art. While at the studio, she drew from nature, making sketches of city landscapes and funny street scenes. Later on it became one of the invariable components of her creative method. Along with the constant drawing from nature, the pupils studied the classical artistic heritage and contemporary Russian art. One of the most striking impressions were for Akhvlediani the works of Verbal, which she saw in Moscow.

Studies under the guidance of Sklifosovsky proved to be an excellent professional training. Akhvlediani began teaching drawing at the secondary school, and in 1919 her works were first exhibited in Tiflis together with the pictures of Gudiashvili and Kakabadze.

In 1922 Akhvlediani entered the painting department of the Tiflis Academy of Arts. The class was conducted by Gigo Gabashvili, the acknowledged master of genre and portrait painting, who had received education in Russia and followed the traditions of Russian realistic painting. He loved Ids native Tiflis and created an interesting series of images of its typical inhabitants: artisans, butchers, hawkers, as well as men and women of the wealthy sections.

Akhvlediani, however, was attracted not so much by portrait as by genre and urban landscape painting. While studying at the Academy, she continued sketching in the Tiflis streets under the direction of Boris Fogel. "...The northerner, keenly sensitive of the rich colours of the south," lie as many others, was charmed by the inimitability of the city, and that could not but influence his students' attitude to work.

Akhvlediani watched with interest the everyday life of Tiflis and of the Georgian provinces, the range of her favourite subjects gradually taking shape. They were the cosy quiet Telavi, the seaside Batumi with its tearooms and bazaars, the interior of the old houses, and architectural monuments. Her attention was attracted by the peasants from Kakhetia in their national costumes, the musha por- ters carrying with the perseverence of ants most di- verse loads over the Tiflis pavements. One can feel in the pencil drawings and in the water-colours of that time free use of the material and the ability to generalize and to convey what is most typical. Unfortunately, few drawings made in Tiflis itself have been preserved. These few sketches proved very useful abroad, where Akhvlediani, a first-year student who showed considerable abilities, was sent in 1922 as a scholarship-holder of the Academy of Arts.

She spent about two years in Italy. Rome, Milan and especially Venice stunned her by their beauty. Akhvlediani tried to see as much as possible and deeply to understand the culture of the wonderful country. She studied the Italian language and was drawing a great deal. She did not have, of course, time enough, and, regretting it, the artist left this characteristic inscription on one of the books: "Oh, what an idiot I am, God forgive me! I am sitting at the tailor's and waiting for my jacket to be ready, reading this book and, overjoyed because I understood almost everything. I was about to kiss the tailor! On the one hand, I want to see things and, on the other, how exasperatingly fast time passes, and I am doing nothing, though sometimes my fingers itch to work...".

Akhvlediani never kept a diary. Instead, there were her sketches, drawings and, as the result, pictures testifying to the ability to reveal the unique features of the cities she had seen, to notice the peculiarities of the crowds in them. Her numerous albums have almost none of the generally known monuments of architecture. While admiring the ideally beautiful and receiving a creative impulse from it, she remained faithful to her theme and portrayed what was typical and sometimes amusing.

She found interesting, for example, little dwelling houses clustering to the walls of an old basilica. She was also attracted by narrow, 'mysterious' little streets and, of course, by the townspeople. Her albums are full of small drawings depicting various personages and scenes witnessed in the streets of Italian cities. The figures are sometimes awkward and sketchy. The artist deliberately simplified the form, reducing it to the simplest geometrical dimensions. There are sketches done in a flexible, vivid line. They reflect the artist's subtle observation and growing mastery. Having spent in Italy about two years, Akhvlediani went to Paris.

Having overcome the hard consequences of the First World War, the city was regaining the reputation of one of the international centres of artistic culture. Artists from all over the world were again gathering there after a brief lull. The Salons des indèpendents and the Salons d'autumne continued their activities. Exhibitions were being arranged in the numerous private galleries and in restaurants and cafés.

Mayakovsky, who visited Paris in the autumn of 1922, wrote: "...Painters of various schools and trends: the Cubists, Les Fauves, the Simultaneists and, of course, a great number of society painters are being exhibited... As always, there is, in addition. the dernier cri. Just now these functions are being performed by the all-asserting and all-denying Dada." The numerous but sometimes short-lived magazines reflect in their articles the passionate polemics between representatives of the various trends in art. The intensity of artistic life was stunning. But Akhvlediani was a painter with the already formed views, with a definite range of themes and images. Though not indifferent to the new artistic theories, she rather gravitated in her art to the masters of the past. Later on Akhvlediani repeatedly recalled that the works of Pieter Brueghel delighted her by the ability to construct a composition and to portray the life of man in natural surroundings. El Greco charmed by his effects of light and the ability to spiritualize inanimate matter. The influence of these masters and some of the artists of the new time are perceptible in her works of the Paris and subsequent periods.

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