During my recent visit to Tbilisi, I came across an exhibition celebrating Zurab Porchkhidze (1934–1993), a masterful illustrator whose work shaped generations of Georgian readers. His art felt like an intimate conversation between storyteller and child, between tradition and imagination.
Born in Kutaisi, Porchkhidze studied book illustration at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts from 1956 to 1962, before completing postgraduate research in easel graphics in 1970 under Professor Vladimir Keshelava. He later became a professor and head of the department of applied graphics at the Academy and held the title of Honoured Artist of Georgia.
Porchkhidze illustrated more than 100 works, including children’s books, literary classics, international fairy tales, and popular science texts. He served as creative editor for the publishing house Literature and Art and regularly contributed to magazines like Dila, Pioneer, and Nyangi.
Some of his illustrations were in best-loved books including Simon Gugunava’s Tamariani; Lado Asatiani’s The Battle of Bassiani; Archil Sulakauri’s Adventure of Salamura and the Magic Dress; and Georgian translations of works by Japanese writers Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Yasunari Kawabata.
Porchkhidze’s artistry traversed borders and genres. He decorated everything from Georgian folk tales to Japanese and Tajik fairy tales, and literary classics from both the East and West. His illustrations are rich in folk motifs and poetic symbolism, yet precise in line and emotionally vivid, uniting local tradition with global imagination.
From the 1960s to early 1990s, he remained actively creative, spanning eras of political and cultural transition, yet staying visually expressive.
The current exhibition at the National Gallery offers a visual celebration of Porchkhidze’s work, from pen sketches, book pages, and magazine spreads to original artworks. It highlights not just his technique, but also how Georgian narrative art evolved under his direction. In Georgian visual culture, he wasn’t just an illustrator; he was a keeper of storytelling and a visual guardian of imagination.
The exhibition runs from 20 June to 3 August 2025 at the National Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in foreign aid evaluations and audits, education, psychosocial support, resilience, peace and stabilization, and communication, including script writing and voice work. She lives in Paris. Her latest books are: If Paris Were My Lover (2025), Tranquility Mapping (2025), Moon, Mood, and Mind Mapping Tracker (2025), and Innovations within Constraints Handbook (2025). She is the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), 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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