Avtandil Nakashidze, known as Avtandil Kutubidze is a Georgian artist whose works are almost in all countries exhibition spaces and private collections. His success story has begun from the 90s of the last century, since then he has permanently organized personal exhibitions. In 2011 he became an UN Ambassador for Peace. He is still participating in exhibitions and cultural events in various countries.
An angel knocking at our door.
It may seem strange that some artists of the 21st century still remain loyal to the traditions of classical art storytelling despite an array of other technological tricks present today with using new techniques, materials and borrowing virtual plots with characters of the cyberspace. To Nakashidze, the evanescence of the virtual world, when information is changing every second, is alien. His artistic stance is the function of artistic images borne by the folk epic and religious traditions of Georgia rather than time. With him a woman is always feminine and therefore desired and a man is always masculine, strong, clever and passionate. The artist in his late fifties is still romantic who keeps getting amazed at everything alive that is born or found unexpectedly in nature, society, books or in the paintings of his idols emanating vital energy of beautiful creation.
Personal criteria – to be in unison with his soul, inner world and be truthful to his professional principles and the ethical taboo of his conscience elaborated through his creative asceticism.
Line – this is the main criterion of the artistic quality of a work. In his Coquette an almost monochromatic gamut of a chosen color palette underlines its graphics and elegance; as for color nuances, they are created only by using shades of similar tonalities. The brightness is not on the outside: it emanates from inside. It is the light created on the canvas by all-embracing femininity of his heroines: dreamers, coquettes, musicians, bicycle riders, and of course by playing with imaginary and ever beautiful Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit and made herself a wanted and delightful muse.
Composition is almost always spontaneous: the artist works without a preliminary sketch. For him the most important thing is a play of imagination delving into the depths of the canvas. But even the most playful subjects, their seeming lightness are borne by practicing painting for years, by experience in choosing a composition which is never premeditated but is borne by heart. The artist rarely resorts to a posing model. Its presence in the studio is caused by the author’s attention to anatomic details of the figure and is needed for draftsmanship of different parts of the body, for giving elegance to arms and legs like in his Birth of Music. The artist sometimes solves this problem using grotesque lengthening hands and feet of a model on purpose to follow the rhythm of the music of the painting.
Nirvana of the emptiness. It is important to give a painting a space to breathe; therefore, paintings not created for a particular customer surprise us with proper patches of void, unfilled fragments of the canvas. In such cases, a mental image of the painting catches the eye of the observer taking them to the heights of the spirit (Virgin and Child). Using this technique, the artist leaves a space for an observer to take part in the plot of the painting. Quite often these patches of void in his paintings serve the purpose of filling them with the imagination of the observer for whom painting is a process of meditation.
Religion to Avtandil Nakashidze is the synthesis of the spirit and soul when attending a church becomes as important as breathing air. But subjects of his religious paintings are never connected to canonical religious texts. Working on the composition, in this case, is a kind of getting to know oneself through immersing oneself in the events of the past era creating a feeling of witnessing them. That is why in the painting Jesus among Apostles and Saints there are additional details and strokes creating an atmosphere of love and acceptance for every character from the apostles to the simple men who turned out to be in focus by accident. Religious painting, according to the artist, must carry spirit, light and prayer. The artist conveys these peculiarities by using nuances of light which is accomplished by glazing and figures looking like they are separated from the objective reality flying in the expanse of color emanating light.
Categories of freedom, humanism, and spirituality are leitmotifs running through his entire works in which there is a tinge of irony, some elements of playfulness in the expressiveness of the postures of his models deliberate disproportion of which plays second part to the melody of the harp. Its symbolic magic strings, which the artist touches with his fingers, demonstrate absolute love for life and everybody that he encounters on his way, for those who are chosen to be his travel companions who derive genuine satisfaction from his art and participate in the creation of art in the name of humanism becoming gourmets of the beautiful.
Mazheykina Galina
Art critic
An angel knocking at our door.
It may seem strange that some artists of the 21st century still remain loyal to the traditions of classical art storytelling despite an array of other technological tricks present today with using new techniques, materials and borrowing virtual plots with characters of the cyberspace. To Nakashidze, the evanescence of the virtual world, when information is changing every second, is alien. His artistic stance is the function of artistic images borne by the folk epic and religious traditions of Georgia rather than time. With him a woman is always feminine and therefore desired and a man is always masculine, strong, clever and passionate. The artist in his late fifties is still romantic who keeps getting amazed at everything alive that is born or found unexpectedly in nature, society, books or in the paintings of his idols emanating vital energy of beautiful creation.
Personal criteria – to be in unison with his soul, inner world and be truthful to his professional principles and the ethical taboo of his conscience elaborated through his creative asceticism.
Line – this is the main criterion of the artistic quality of a work. In his Coquette an almost monochromatic gamut of a chosen color palette underlines its graphics and elegance; as for color nuances, they are created only by using shades of similar tonalities. The brightness is not on the outside: it emanates from inside. It is the light created on the canvas by all-embracing femininity of his heroines: dreamers, coquettes, musicians, bicycle riders, and of course by playing with imaginary and ever beautiful Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit and made herself a wanted and delightful muse.
Composition is almost always spontaneous: the artist works without a preliminary sketch. For him the most important thing is a play of imagination delving into the depths of the canvas. But even the most playful subjects, their seeming lightness are borne by practicing painting for years, by experience in choosing a composition which is never premeditated but is borne by heart. The artist rarely resorts to a posing model. Its presence in the studio is caused by the author’s attention to anatomic details of the figure and is needed for draftsmanship of different parts of the body, for giving elegance to arms and legs like in his Birth of Music. The artist sometimes solves this problem using grotesque lengthening hands and feet of a model on purpose to follow the rhythm of the music of the painting.
Nirvana of the emptiness. It is important to give a painting a space to breathe; therefore, paintings not created for a particular customer surprise us with proper patches of void, unfilled fragments of the canvas. In such cases, a mental image of the painting catches the eye of the observer taking them to the heights of the spirit (Virgin and Child). Using this technique, the artist leaves a space for an observer to take part in the plot of the painting. Quite often these patches of void in his paintings serve the purpose of filling them with the imagination of the observer for whom painting is a process of meditation.
Religion to Avtandil Nakashidze is the synthesis of the spirit and soul when attending a church becomes as important as breathing air. But subjects of his religious paintings are never connected to canonical religious texts. Working on the composition, in this case, is a kind of getting to know oneself through immersing oneself in the events of the past era creating a feeling of witnessing them. That is why in the painting Jesus among Apostles and Saints there are additional details and strokes creating an atmosphere of love and acceptance for every character from the apostles to the simple men who turned out to be in focus by accident. Religious painting, according to the artist, must carry spirit, light and prayer. The artist conveys these peculiarities by using nuances of light which is accomplished by glazing and figures looking like they are separated from the objective reality flying in the expanse of color emanating light.
Categories of freedom, humanism, and spirituality are leitmotifs running through his entire works in which there is a tinge of irony, some elements of playfulness in the expressiveness of the postures of his models deliberate disproportion of which plays second part to the melody of the harp. Its symbolic magic strings, which the artist touches with his fingers, demonstrate absolute love for life and everybody that he encounters on his way, for those who are chosen to be his travel companions who derive genuine satisfaction from his art and participate in the creation of art in the name of humanism becoming gourmets of the beautiful.
Mazheykina Galina
Art critic
