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eBook - David Kakabadze - a Great Georgian Artist Biography of David Kakabadze
It is impossible to imagine the whole character of David Kakabadze, of extremely persistent and at the same time deeply emotional man without taking into consideration the different sides of his creative searching. First what attracts one's attention, after observing the whole creative life of the painter, is the vital interest to study the nature and the passionate desire to recreate its equivalent. This is also the variety of the quest for the artistic expression, dealing with different artistic styles and techniques, without spoiling the master's individuality and national principles of his art. At last it is the widest scope of his creative thinking and of his genre richness, which is expressed in the real nature, in the abstraction of the visible, in the visual rendering of the abstract; in portraits and self-portraits, solved realistically and cubistically, in still life, sea mountain and urban sceneries, in miniature, in mural paintings, theatrical-decorative art, in pure decorative compositions, in setting the films and designing the national festivals-these all seem to be in the power of the master.
In order to understand the artistic peculiarity of Kakabadze's works, we must take into consideration the fact that apart from the gift for artistic thinking he had an inclination for the scientific research. Scientific analysis, experiment and generalization make his second nature. These two sources of his nature are revealed in his artistic practice, sometimes independently and sometimes are interlaced with each other.
David acquired passion for art from childhood. In his school years he painted from life much, took brief lessons in painting from foreign painters, got, familiar with the technique of painting from books. In Petersburg, together with the university course, he took a strict academic course in painting and drawing in the studio of the painter Dmitriev-Kavkazki. Later, he paid a long visit to Italy and Germany, making an intensive study of the world monuments of art and enriching his knowledge. In 1920-1927 he worked in Paris, successfully mastering not only the achievements arts but the achievements of science as well. Together with his fine art researching he worked in scientific investigation of ancient Georgian chisel work, in ornament art, in critics, in the field of invention and took part in public and pedagogical activities.
In Paris his attention was attracted by the urban landscape and by the genre scenes. He observed the embankment of the Seine, the bridges, the street architecture. Sketches are made with vividness and sharp observation. By plane drawing such brio is shown in the shimmering surface of the Seine, in the rustling of the leaves in Paris boulevards, in the playing of light and shade. Life scenes of simple Parisians are vividly depicted on the canvas.
His portraits, painted between 1913-1918 years, form the original series: five self-portraits, two portraits of mother, portraits of brother and friend. Two of them "Self-portrait with Pomegranates" (1913) and "Imereti - My Mother" (1918-discuss later) are not just portraits but generalized characters.
David Kakabadze is one of the first Georgian painters who made a vast painting-generalization. He had solved this problem before his journey abroad in 1918. It's evident that Kakabadze was a rational man, who paid a great attention to the title of the picture. He considered that "the title of the picture must reveal its essence" "its whole composition". And so, in the title of the picture, painted in the beginning of his independent activity, he thought about the generalization – “Imereti - My Mother".
These pictures are interesting not for their new forms only, but for the fact that the painter used a new expression and the working process in the industrial painting. In the works of 1949 we see the unity of man and nature. Later in his creative work this theme occupies an essential place. ("Svaneti-Ore Mining", "Kazbegi", "Rustavi" etc.) But man and labor are not of great importance. Just in one of his sketches, for his big canvas, he succeeded in avoiding it. In the sketch "Ore Mining in the Vicinity of Kutaisi", painted in 1951 the painter found an interesting way for working out the topic: allocation of workers and trucks in the background of the mine ores. Distinct rhythm, coordinated movement and energetic rate of work that characterizes the working process, sings praise to the strength of the working man. This famous painting, devoted to the working process, which was the beginning of the new era of his artistic activity, became the swan's song of the famous master.
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David Kakabadze's (1889-1952) creative life was a hard one even full of contradictions which were shown in his great desire to develop the national traditions and to raise them to the new quality on the one hand and in the desire to comprehend and master the "newest" trends in the West European art of the XX century on the other hand. These contradictions, that seem "irreconcilable" at first sight, reveal his solid character, his aim and his unique creative individuality.
He used oil, pencil, water-colors, metal, glass and other technical means with a great mastership. The peculiarity of his talent is revealed in his every work, in every period of his creative life, in which he planned his beforehand. First his task was inwardly "mastered", seriously decided and then it was fulfilled in the generalized artistic forms. In this way he created landscapes, searching for the equivalent to the nature. This is the explanation to the facts that he generally made a series, groups of works, in which we see different variations of working out one and the same topic, and we see no "alternation" or the stages in search of a better decision. If we take separately each variation, from this series, we'll see that it is an artistically fulfilled piece of art.
The biography of David Kakabadze gives us much explanation about versatile searches of his soul and intellect.
He was born in 1889 in the village Kukhi, in a poor landless family of a peasant. To support his family his father settled in Kutaisi where he worked as a ferryman. He gave education to his children. After finishing the gymnasium in Kutaisi, David succeeded in getting a higher education, owing to the progressive representatives of the Georgian intelligentsia and other charitable societies. At the Petersburg University, in 1910-1915, he studied the natural sciences at the mathematical department, which he graduated with the first-grade diploma.
His passion to create series of works rises in his artistic "philosophy". At different periods of time he created several pictures of the same size. These are mainly the landscapes of: Tbilisi, Paris, Bretagne, Svaneti, Imereti, Kodjori neighborhoods and other places. For each he chose one special style.
His water-color is different in the series "Bretagne" executed in Paris in the 20th. Houses, boats, mills even the earth, the sky and sea, designed with chiaroscuro, seem to dissolve, plunge into the white surface of the paper. This kind of solution, where the white color is essential, we do not find in his earlier or later works. The painter doesn't seek for the material stability of the composition. He is attracted by the paintings of China and Japan, by the unsteadiness that destroys the materiality of the objects.
So the "Self-portrait with Pomegranates" was designed as the personification of a painter of Georgia in general. Just the same is in the famous "Still life of Imereti" (1918). Here the articles of daily use express local character of the Georgian life.
The nature of his native Imereti, one of the provinces of west Georgia, takes an essential place in his artistic activity, "Imereti" is the main part of his biography not because of that he devoted most of his pictures to it, but mainly because of its being his "private" topic, very close to him, brought to the artistic perfection.
In 1949 Kakabadze painted two vast canvases "Poti, Elevator" and "Svaneti, Ore Minings". In these both paintings objects are shown in their real aspects, with its characteristic texture. The viewer feels that the bare rocks are unconquered, the mist is light, the sea waves are deep. But either the feeling of decoration, in its best meaning, or the acuteness of compositional fantasy - don't betray him.
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