Gudiashvili Lado Davidovich

Gudiashvili Lado (Vladimir) Davidovich. (March 18, 1896, Tiflis - July 20, 1980, Tbilisi). A major Soviet and Georgian artist-painter, graphic artist and monumentalist, teacher. People's Artist of the USSR (1972). Hero of Socialist Labor (1976). Lado Gudiashvili was born in Tiflis in 1896 into the family of a railway employee. At the age of 14 he entered art school, after graduating he worked as an art teacher at school. In 1915, his first personal exhibition was held in Tiflis, which immediately made his name in the artistic circles of Georgia. Gudiashvili entered the circle of Georgian intellectuals and was close to the group of symbolist poets “Blue Horns”, organized by Paolo Yashvili. He took part in an archaeological expedition that studied monuments of Georgian architecture, and copied a lot of ancient frescoes. He worked simultaneously as an artist and graphic artist. At the exhibition of Georgian art held in 1919, more than fifty of his paintings and watercolors were exhibited. In 1919, together with artists David Kakabadze and Shalva Kikodze, he went to Paris, which at that time was actually the center of world art. Gudiashvili lived in Paris for six years, often exhibiting his work. In 1925, a book by critic Maurice Renal was published in France, entirely dedicated to the work of Lado Gudiashvili. Despite his undoubted success for a foreigner, Lado Gudiashvili found it difficult to endure life away from Georgia and returned to Tbilisi in 1925. In 1945 he painted the altar of the Kashveti Church in Tbilisi. For this he was expelled from the CPSU(b) and fired from his job at the art academy in Tbilisi. During his lifetime, his works were exhibited in museums, including the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow and the State Museum of Art of Georgia in Tbilisi. The house-museum of Lado Gudiashvili has been opened in Tbilisi.