Pirosmani

Pirosmani is such a mysterious person that even the exact date of his birth has not been preserved, not to mention other facts from his life. It is generally accepted that he was born approximately in 1862.

He is the most famous self-taught Georgian artist. His style of work is primitivism. During his lifetime he created about two thousand pictorial canvases, murals and signages. He painted signages for “dukhans” (dukhan is a historical type of Georgian catering establishment).

The secret of the black background on almost all of his works is lack of money even for canvas. He painted his works on black oilcloths used to cover the tables in the dukhans. The artist worked practically for free and died unknown. His most interesting works were sold for 30 rubles, and the simpler ones for a glass of vodka.

Unfortunately, primitivism was not appreciated, moreover, ridiculed in Georgia of that time. His paintings did not have any ideological message, as the art of Gauguin and Rousseau. He seems to have had no intentions to copy Gauguin, he just painted, but the paintings resembled Gauguin’s art. His genre is not borrowed from anyone, it formed by itself. Thus, he became not a follower of primitivism but its founder. Half a century later his paintings began to gain popularity and were exhibited from Paris to New York. It is a sad story known to many only due to the song “A million of scarlet roses”. Few people know that the lyrics of this piece of music were addressed to the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani.