Gudiashvili, Lado

Well-known Georgian painter.

Real first name and patronymic ? Vladimir Davidovich.

Born in Tiflis on March 18(30), 1896, in a family of a railroad employee. Studied in Tiflis Painting and Sculpture School (1910-1914), in Ronson's private Parisian Academy (1919-1926). Joined the Georgian poetry group Blue Horns (1914-1918) striving to organically fuse the national prosody with an image structure of the French symbolism. In Paris, frequented the famous Hive (La Ruche), the painters' colony, where he met I. Zuloaga, A. Modigliani, N. Goncharova, and M. Larionov. Was largely influenced by N. Pirosmanishvili.

The master's early works of everyday life romantics combine the dramatic grotesque and a poet mystery charm (Tsotskhali Fish, 1920, Georgia Art Museum, Tbilisi). Closeness to the traditions of old Caucasian and Persian art strengthened with his return to the homeland in 1926. The blinking color-grade became warmer, and simultaneously the impression of the "theater world" gets growing emphasis; many Gudiashvili's paintings are created upon the plots of operas and ballets or portray costumed actresses. Like his compatriot writers (G. Robakidze, K. Gamsakhurdia, etc.), he eagerly employs mythological allegories (Seraphite's Walk, 1940, ibidem) who normally feature a gracious majestic beauty in the center presenting a mysterious "Goddess of Earth."

Gudiashvili also painted as a muralist; he re-painted the walls in the Kashveti temple in Tbilisi in 1946; for that, he was expelled from the Communist Party and fired from Tbilisi Art Academy where he had been teaching since 1926.

In a huge Anti-Nazi Cycle of ink drawings (1942-1943), Gudiashvili appeared a sort of "Georgian Goya": half-beast half-humanlike monsters surrounding the ruins of the arts and naked "goddesses" symbolize the ideas of culture's end.

Lado Gudiashvili also was productive as a book illustrator (drawings to S.S. Orbeliani's Wisdoms of the Lies, 1939), stage designer, and movie artist. In 1976, received the title of Socialist Labor Hero (Geroy sotsialisticheskogo truda).

Lado Gudiashvili deceased in Tbilisi on July 20, 1980.