Hanukkah, 2016,
Oil on canvas, 100X90 cm.
Signed and dated.
Zurab Martiashvili, a virtuoso Georgian portrait painter, combine a love of mankind and nostalgia for the stories of Jewish tradition. There is considerable humor in the faces of the array of classical figures that the artist portrays with skilled naiveté, humor that creates a look of empathy and vitality that captures the heart of the viewer.
Zurab Martiashvili faithfully represents the Georgian painting tradition of local art based on folklore. The naïve style is related to the artist’s store of childhood memories. Naïve art is usually characterized by idealized scenes from everyday life, stories that venerate innocence, incorporating simple lines and bright, exuberant colors. The paintings are fundamentally figurative and are easy to understand. Zurab Martiashvili makes wonderful use of this genre, elevating his paintings to a standard that attracts empathy on the part of the viewer.
The Jewish festivals, seasoned with colorful customs, are expressed in his work and given a new visual interpretation. All the characters he draws look out directly, opening themselves up to the viewer. The paintings are filled with detail and overflowing with soothing, utopian shades. In his paintings, the artist seems to be describing his desire for a positive and innocent world, free of evil, seemingly ignoring the troubling reality of everyday life around us.
Zurab Martiashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1982, into the family of the artist Vakhtang Martiashvili. He attended the Geo Art School and graduated from the High School of the Arts in Tbilisi. Since 2005 he has been exhibiting professionally in Georgia and around the world. His paintings grace collections in New York, London, Holland, Germany, Russia, Poland, Israel, France and Ukraine.
The traditional motifs incorporated in present-day life are reminiscent of the early naive work of renowned artists such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Gauguin, and in Israel – Reuven Rubin and Nachum Gutman. The influence of Russian Orthodox church painting adds a special element to his work. In the classic diptych “Jewelry in Blue”, there is particular use of the motif of soft light visible on the faces of the women adorned with the jewelry. Martiashvili pays special attention to the design of his characters’ clothing. In a painting of the Chanukah holiday the artist shows a couple standing in front of the menorah, merging the background of the painted city with the interaction between the two figures. Another example of a refreshing and unique dramatic visual development can be seen in the work that depicts four klezmer musicians celebrating at a kosher Jewish meal. The artist reaches a high point in a painting dealing with the Purim holiday.
In 1995 Zurab Martiashvili was awarded a first prize by the Greenpeace organization at the “Save Nature” exhibition. At the end of the 1990s he continued holding one-man exhibitions in the Blue Gallery in Tbilisi, and in Tyumen. In the early 2000s he exhibited in Girona, Spain, at the Euro Asia fair in Kiev, and in the “White Canvas” space in Singapore. His recent exhibitions have been at the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi, and the “Magic of Color” exhibitions in Geneva, Switzerland.
Doron Polak – International Artists’ Museum. |
