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Exhibition of Shalva Kikodze in Tbilisi



An exhibition of Shalva Kikodze’ works, entitled ‘Shalva Kikodze 120’ will be held from 25 December 2015 to 10 February 2016 in the Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi. The 120 in the title of the exhibition represents the 120th anniversary in 2014 of Shalva Kikodze’s birth.

Curated by Maya Tsitsishvili, Irine Abesadze and Nino Chogoshvili, there are more than 300 works of art exhibited, from his caricatures to his Parisian paintings and sketches.

Kikodze was born in 1894 in the village of Bakhvi, Guria, in the Ozurgeti district of Georgia. In 1914 he enrolled in Moscow University in the law faculty – and in the same year he published his first caricatures in the magazine Lakhti (The Girdle). By 1916 he changed to Moscow’s Art School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1918 he returned to Tbilisi to work on other artistic magazines, such as ‘Theatre and Life,’ ‘Theatre and Music,’ ‘Art’ and the satirical magazine called ‘The Devil’s Whip.’



In January 1920 he arrived in Paris due to a scholarship awarded by the Georgian Ministry of Public Education – as an expressionist painter, graphic artist, and theatre decorator. He worked at the Old Pigeon Theatre, the Odeon, and Atelier in Paris. His most productive period in terms of artistic work was during the (almost) two years in Paris where he met other Georgian artists Dimitri Shevardnadze, Viktor Nozadze, and Geronti Kikodze.

In February 1921 he had a joint art exhibition with noted Georgian artists David Kakabadze and Lado Gudiashvili at the Salon des Independents - Salon of the Independents. In the same year, the same three artists exhibited at La Licorne Gallery in Paris.

On August 11 he arrived in Germany in the resort town of Bad-Neuenahr. He died suddenly in Freiburg, Germany, on November 7, 1921, of tuberculosis (TB) at the age of 27.

He painted everyday scenes of Guria and Abkhazia in 1907, and most his caricatures around 1917, but his best works, I think, are from his years in Paris.


The above Indian ink sketch is Abkhazia, Gudauti (1907).


The above Indian ink sketch is called Konstantine Gamsakhurdia (1917). The sketch below is Veriko Anjaparidze (1917).


The following oil paintings are from Paris in 1920. The first is Artist's Coffee House in Paris, followed by Paris - Garden of Luxembourg, and an Indian ink drawing called Parisian Sketch. The top photograph is of the painting Paris - Eiffel Tower.








MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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