From Blue Stallions to Abstraction: Temo Gotsadze 75 exhibition

The National Gallery is holding a jubilee exhibition of Temo Gotsadze’s works from 25 March to 15 April 2016 in Tbilisi, Georgia. The solo exhibition at the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery of the Georgian National Museum is called ‘From Blue Stallions to Abstraction’ to mark the artist's 75th birthday.

The exhibition features about 140 of Gotsadze’s works in three four rooms. They represent the period 2000-2015, with the exception of the 1965 work, Blue Stallions, a magnificent large oil painting (230cm x 240cm) – see below.

In Gotsadze’s works from Blue Stallions to Abstraction they are roughly divided into 8 themes, showing the artist’s changing central ideas and inspirations:

1. Symphony and Music 2000-2015

2. The Sea 2010

3. Pegasus 2010-2015 (horse themes)

4. Imereti 2010-2012 (an agricultural town in mid-Georgia)

5. Urban activation 2011

6. Abstract Variations 2011

7. Real Allusion 2014

8. The Knight in the Panther’s Skin 2015

The painting below is Quartet (2015).

Spring Wind (2000) is one of the few paintings depicting the weather.

Below is The Sea (2010).

Below is Striving (2011) – one of my favourites in the exhibition – Trinity (2012) and Rebel (2015).

Below is Imereti (2012).

Below is one of the paintings from the Urban Activation (2011) theme.

The 2015 Knight in the Panther’s Skin works (water colour and pencil on paper) are illustrations based on the epic 12th century poem by Georgian poet, Shota Rustaveli. The picture below depicts the following stanza:

Seek three years him whom thou hast to seek ;

If thou find him, come gaily telling thy victory.

If thou find him not, I shall believe he was a vision.

Thou shalt meet the rosebud unwithered, unfaded.

I heard a shout. I looked around, a knight cried out

Haughtily, he was galloping along the seashore, he was hurt

By a wound, his sword was broken and soiled, blood flowed down;

He threatened his foes, was wrathful, curse, complained.

I threw away my sword, I leaped down, I caught the panther with my hands, I wished to kiss it for the sake of her for whom hot fires burn me.

It roared at me, and worried with its blood-shedding paws.

I could bear no more; with enraged heart I killed it too.

Temo Gotsadze (1941-) was the artistic producer and chief artist at the Georgian Television and Radio Broadcaster from 1967-1983. He was director of the House of Artists, and from 1988-2005 he was the general director of the National Picture Gallery. His works are preserved at the Georgian National Museum, Federal Museum of California, State Tretyakov Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Dusseldorf, Museum of Contemporary Art in Canada, the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, and in other galleries around the world.

The Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia and the Tbilisi City Hall Centre of Cultural Events are supporting the exhibition.

http://museum.ge

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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