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Avant-Garde Art
1900-1937
Exhibition > Nana Shervashidze
In 1920, at the initiative of Dimitri Shevardnadze (1885-1937), the Founding Board of the Georgian
Artists’ Society established the Georgian National Gallery in Tbilisi. Later, this gallery became the
Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts.
D
imitri Shevardnadze was a pu-
blic figure and erudite who
dedicated his entire life to ex-
panding and enriching the museum’s
collections. He dreamed of creating
a museum in Georgia on par with the
Hermitage and the Louvre. Indeed, he
defined the concept of the gallery as a
broad-spectrum museum that would
include old and new Western and Eas-
tern art. During its first years as the
gallery and later as a museum, the ins-
titution purchased Persian, Chinese,
European and Russian masterpieces,
unique Georgian medieval artifacts as
well as works by Pirosmani and other
Georgian artists of the time.
In addition to promoting older ar-
tworks, Shevardnadze and the Board of
the Artists’ Society believed that new
art should be a part of the gallery’s
collections. Purchasing works repre-
senting various schools of contempo-
rary art was an early focus in the late
1910s. In his youth Shevardnadze was
fascinated by German and French art,
understood the most radical schools of
contemporary art, and was interested
in works created by local artists and
those who visited Tbilisi whose art was
characterized by new artistic forms and
methods of visual expression. Such
28 GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM Vladimir (Voldemar) Boberman (1897-1977)
Landscape, oil on canvas, 1910s, Georgian National Museum
works were purchased for the National
Gallery mostly from the autumn and
spring exhibitions held in 1919 with
support from the government of the
Republic of Georgia.
The 1919 report of the Georgian Ar-
tists’ Society reads: “The Society orga-
nized three exhibitions: The first, sho-
wing old church mural painting was
held at the beginning of 1917, and two
more were organized in 1919 – one
exhibition of contemporary Georgian
artists, in May; and the other showing
the work of artists of various nationa-
lities who live in Georgia, in December.
The Society opened its exhibition on
4 May with the first collective exhibi-
tion of contemporary Georgian artists.
Artists of various schools presented
their paintings. Sculptures were also Dimitri Shevardnadze (1885-1937). Artist
Founder of the National Gallery in 1920
exhibited. Thanks to this exhibition,
more about the artistic potential of our
country has been discovered. The third
exhibition, opened on 12 December,
1919, was held in the Temple of Glory
to exhibit paintings and sculptures by
artists of various nationalities living in
Georgia.” 1
In its 1928 report submitted to the
government, the Board of the Artists’
Society underscored the need to esta-
blish a contemporary art gallery. “…A
GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM 29

Wassily Kandinsky (1861-1944). "Black Line",
Oil on canvas, 1920, Georgian National
Museum (above); David Kakabadze (1889-
1952), Abstraction, Oil on cardboard,
1926, Georgian National Museum (below);
Mikheil Bilanishvili (1901-1934), Portrait of
Giorgi Ghambarashvili. Oil on canvas, 1926,
Georgian National Museum (next page).
30 GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
gallery is both a print outlet and a stage
for an artist, a place where all new and
valuable given by contemporary pain-
ting to Georgian art should be gathe-
red. We do not have such a gallery… It
(gallery – N. S.) will be a very important
cultural institution where the Georgian
public will soon be able to see that Ge-
orgian painting is not quite as poor as
many may think, and that it has a gre-
at – and quite secure – future. In addi-
tion, exemplary art objects from con-
temporary Russia and other countries
will be collected in this gallery so that
the Georgian masses can learn what is
happening in this field outside Georgia
as well.” 2 From the exhibition of David
Kakabadze who had returned from Pa-
ris in 1928, abstract compositions were
purchased for the gallery collection. By
the end of the 1920s, the museum col-
lection had a substantial number of the
newest works of art.
Over decades, the museum changed
its name and location. In the 1930s, the
Museum of Visual Arts “Metekhi” was lo-
cated on a cliff, in the building of an old
prison next to Metekhi Church, looking
at Tbilisi from above. It was precisely in
the 1930s, years full of unrest and fear,
that the museum purchased the who-
le collection of Voldemar Boberman's
paintings and graphic artworks, thus
becoming a rare owner of the painter's
avant-garde creations. During the same
period, remarkable editions of books on
futurism were added to the museum
collections. In 1937, the founder of Ge-
orgian museology and highly eminent
public figure, Dimitri Shevardnadze,
paid with his life for his activities against
the demolition of Metekhi Church.
In 1939, after the museum of con-
temporary Western European art was
closed in Moscow, some of the master-
pieces of avant-garde art from its col-
lections were destroyed as being “for-
malist” and unacceptable for Socialist
society. Others were transferred into
the permanent ownership of museums
in the provincial towns of Russia and
in the Union Republics. In Tbilisi, the
Metekhi Museum collections received
two avant-garde masterpieces by one
of the founders of abstract art, Wassily
Kandinsky: "Picture with a Circle (Bild
mit Kreis)" and "Black Line". The mu-
seum also received the abstract com-
position "Strange Bird" by the Italian
painter, Osvaldo Licini.
In 1954, a Russian Art Department
was opened at the museum, headed by
art historian and archaeologist, Dmitry
Gordeev (1889-1968). He had actively
GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM 31
Opening of "Avant-Garde 1900-1937" Exhibition
participated in the "Tbilisi avant-gar-
de" movement in the 1910s and was a
member of the futurist-zaumnik group
"41°". Naturally, avant-garde art was hi-
ghly regarded by Gordeev. He enriched
the museum collections by acquiring
graphic art works by Mikhail Larionov,
N. Goncharova, K. Malevich, O. Rozano-
va and A. Volkov. As a result of an in-
ventory of the graphic arts collection
of the museum's Russian Art Depart-
ment in 2013, a folder was found in
Dmitry Gordeev's archives containing
cubo-futuristic watercolors and an ad-
vertising poster for "ARS" Magazine.
In 1978, collections of the newly cre-
ated Department of the Art of Soviet
Republics were gradually filled with
Russian avant-garde paintings and gra-
phic artworks. Department Head, Lia
Dolaberidze (1928-2005), made a great
contribution to this collection by ac-
quiring objects from almost the entire
Soviet Union. Direct connections with
32
GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
artists and their heirs made it possible
for her to purchase entire collections
rather than single items.
Paintings and drawings by Robert
Falk and Aleksander Shevchenko in the
Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine
Arts allow visitors to follow the deve-
lopment of these remarkable artists'
works. The collection of Robert Falk's
works, purchased in Moscow from his
widow A. Schekina-Krotova, is espe-
cially diverse. The jewel of the collec-
tion is the painting "Paper Flowers"
(1918), which clearly shows a fusion of
Cezanne's artistic style and elements of
Russian primitivism and cubo-futurism,
making this still life particularly stri-
king. The synthesis of elements from
radically different artistic schools fused
into a whole was a typical trait of the
Russian avant-garde.
Avant-garde is always contempo-
rary – a revolutionary aspiration to-
wards renewal and radical change
Landscape. Oil on canvas, 1910s, Georgian National Museum
in life are forever a focus for human
kind. This is why avant-garde in art is
always topical, always attractive. The
"Avant-Garde" exhibition at the Shal-
va Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts
on International Museum Day on 18
May, 2017 was a first attempt to pre-
sent the public with a comprehensi-
ve view of avant-garde art from the
museum’s collections. It was also a
means to express respect and admi-
ration for those whose enthusiasm,
tireless efforts and sacrifices resulted
in the creation of the Shalva Amira-
nashvili Museum of Fine Arts avant-
-garde collection.
1 Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts.
Memoir manuscripts collection of information
collections. Collection 1 (Georgian Artists' Society).
Entry 1. Case 8. Page 1.
2 Abesadze I., Bagratishvili K., "Dimitri Shevardna-
dze", Tbilisi, 1998, p.108.
Vladimir (Voldemar) Boberman (1897-1977) 33
GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM