The Russian Academy Of Arts

On February 29, 2012 in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia there was an inauguration of the exhibition featuring the life and creative work by the world renowned artist Zurab Tsereteli. The opening ceremony was attended by the Georgian President Michael Saakashvili and the Mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava.

The solo show opens in a new museum and exhibition center in the downtown of the city – 27 Rustaveli Prospect known as a former building of the Cadet Corps. In the history of Georgia and Tbilisi at the turn of the 20th century the Tbilisi Cadet Corps is of special interest. Many eminent figures of Russia and Georgia have graduated from this prestigious educational institution. In 1909, the Cadet Corps obtained a new building – an exquisite two-storey mansion with wings and an inner courtyard occupying almost an entire quarter and overlooking three streets. The Tbilisi Cadet Corps has become a specimen of high standards of training, upbringing and financial support of interns. After 1917, the mansion’s fate was rather dramatic: the house suffered devastation, destruction of the interior decoration and a period of communal life – in various times the building was occupied by the Institute of Electro-Technical Equipment, a dormitory, children’s kindergarten and bank. By the early 2000s the mansion had almost completely lost its original feature – in complete decay were the interiors, the inner courtyard and overlapping structures.

In 2005, Zurab Tsereteli initiated a restoration and reconstruction of the mansion for the arrangement of a museum space. The main creative idea was a synthesis of history and modern times implying a preservation of the building’s original design and the use of innovative architectural and engineering possibilities consistent with a museum of world repute, that is a usual practice in European countries when new museums are created in historical buildings. This goal has been brilliantly executed by the noted architect Givi Metreveli, construction engineer David Pirtskhalashvili and designer Niya Galublishvili. The façade of the Cadet Corps has obtained its original appearance and the building now has almost 3000 sq. m of exhibition space, where according to Zurab Tsereteli’s concept there will be exhibition halls, a research and educational center, children’s studio, library, conference hall, art-shop and café. The museum complex includes an inner three-light atrium covered with glass. The classical suite of exhibition rooms of the first floor is two-light and with a ceiling of steel girders. The Museum will be a part of the international museum and exhibition structure that has been conceived and is being created by Zurab Tsereteli. Its goal is to organize an integrated cultural and artistic space uniting artists in Tbilisi, Moscow, Paris and New York. It will host international exhibition projects, lectures by figures of art and culture, master-classes and other events to be held under the auspices of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

The Museum starts its activity with the first in Georgia solo show of Zurab Tsereteli, the People’s Artist of the USSR, Russian Federation and Georgia, President of the Russian Academy of Arts, Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Fine Arts (Paris) and San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid), UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

The exposition shows all the genres and stages of the artist’s creative work. The focus of the display is his monumental composition “Argonauts” (2005), as well as a series of his graphic sheets of the same name where the mythology, ethnography, history, art and culture of ancient nations are closely intertwined.

The theme is continued in the monumental composition “Apple” (2003) produced by Zurab Tsereteli especially for Tbilisi and placed in the inner open air courtyard of the Museum. This work is a replica of his well-known spatial object in the Museum and Exhibition Complex of the Russian Academy of Arts in Moscow. This unique engineering structure, 9m high and 9m in diameter, contains 145 bronze high reliefs forming a single composition.

The halls on the ground floor of the Museum present about one hundred graphic works, enamels and sculptures. The graphic art for Zurab Tsereteli is a principle creative laboratory, where he conducts his constant searches for the plastic and pictorial expression of his ideas, reflections, philosophy of life and art, as well as creates images, many of which find their realization in the artist’s future paintings, sculptures, enamels …

The introduction to the first floor is his sculptural composition “My Favorite Artists”: “Pirosmani and Rousseau” and “Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Chagall and Van Gogh” (2010). It is the acquaintance with the work of these great masters that forever connected Zurab Tsereteli with art. The naïve and folk art, discoveries of the French postimpressionists and artists of Russian avant-garde have become a foundation for the development of his creative world outlook and formation of his individual manner and style.

Over one hundred paintings feature the evolution of Zurab Tsereteli’s art for almost 50 years: from sketches and small genre compositions to monumental canvases, where the master realizes his vision of the decorative possibilities of contemporary figurative art, as well as tries to find new angles of a psychological portrait of his contemporaries, images full of existential content.

The Museum’s display contains works created by Zurab Tsereteli in Brazil, France, Georgia, Russia and other countries. Many of them have been exhibited in his solo shows in Paris (2010); Rome, Palermo and Ancona (2011).

A special photo-section of the exhibition is devoted to the artist’s history of life, in which integral parts are his moments of creativity, meetings with ordinary people and celebrities, his life in the circle of his family, contacts with colleagues, feasts and friendly relations with distinguished figures of art, science, culture and politics, who like Zurab Tsereteli have created the history of the 20th century and continue to make it today.

The solo show totals more than 300 works of art executed by Zurab Tsereteli in various genres and techniques, as well as 250 photographs from his private collection.

Photoreport

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