Davit' Kakabadze (August 8, 1889 – May 10, 1952) was a Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 painter, graphic artist and scenic designer. A multi-talent, he was also an art scholar and innovator in the field of cinematography as well as an amateur photographer. Kakabadze’s works are notable for combining innovative interpretation of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an "Leftist" art with Georgian national traditions, on which he was an expert.
Kakabadze was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Kukhi near the town of Khoni

Khoni

Khoni is a town in the Western Georgian region of Imereti with the population of 11,300 . It is situated on the left bank of the Tskhenistkali River in the north-west of Imereti, close to the border with the region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti and 266 km west of Georgia's capital Tbilisi. The town...

. Sponsored by local philanthropists, he studied natural sciences at St. Petersburg University from which he graduated in 1916. At the same time, he attended painting classes at the studio of Dmitroyev-Kavkazsky and did a research in old Georgian arts. After a brief period of working as a painter and educator in Tbilisi

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

, he went to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 where he lived from 1919 to 1927. He partook in the Société des Artistes Indépendants

Société des Artistes Indépendants

—The Société des Artistes Indépendants formed in Paris in summer 1884 choosing the device "No jury nor awards" . Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were among its founders...

 exhibitions and joint exhibitions with the Georgian artists Lado Gudiashvili

Lado Gudiashvili

Lado Gudiashvili was a 20th century Georgian painter. Gudiashvili was born in Tiflis on March 18 , 1896 into a family of a railroad employee. He studied in the Tiflis school of sculpture and fine art , and later in Ronson's private academy in Paris...

 and Shalva Kikodze

Shalva Kikodze

Shalva Kikodze was a Georgian expressionist painter, graphic artist and theatre decorator. Together with Lado Gudiashvili and David Kakabadze, he is considered a key figure in Georgian art of the early 20th century....

. The cycle of landscapes reproducing the nature of Kakabadze’s native province of Imereti

Imereti

Imereti is a province in Georgia situated along the middle and upper reaches of the Rioni river. It consists of the following Georgian administrative-territorial units:#Kutaisi #Baghdati region#Vani region#Zestafoni region...

 is some of the most interesting of his early works. During his stay in Paris, Kakabadze was attracted by "subjectless painting," and worked on problems of pictorial technique, occasionally using metal, mirror glass, stained glass and other such materials in place of paints. He soon went over to an even more "Leftist" position, and paid generous tribute to cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

. He lectured on various aspects of visual arts in Paris and, developing his interest in kinetic form, in 1923 he constructed a film camera that produced the illusion of relief and thus became one of the pioneers of three-dimensional cinema

3-D film

A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...

. By the mid- 1920s he had rejected his cubist-influenced style in favor of more abstract sculpture and painting.

Having return to Georgia in 1927, Kakabadze continued his Imereti themes in new monumental decorative landscapes, including industrial landscapes. Around the same time, he collaborated with the leading Georgian theatre director Kote Marjanishvili

Kote Marjanishvili

Konstantine "Kote" Marjanishvili also known by the Russified name Konstantin Aleksandrovich Mardzhanov was a Georgian theater director regarded as an important contributor to the pre- and post-revolutionary evolution of Georgian, Russian and Soviet stages...

 to produce several set designs for Marjanishvili’s theatre in Kutaisi

Kutaisi

Kutaisi is Georgia's second largest city and the capital of the western region of Imereti. It is 221 km to the west of Tbilisi.-Geography:...

. In 1931, he also produced a documental film "The Old Monuments of Georgia".
Kakabadze became a professor at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts

Tbilisi State Academy of Arts

The Tbilisi State Academy of Arts is one of the oldest universities in Georgia, Caucasus. It's located in the Tbilisi City near the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre on Rustaveli avenue ....

 in 1928, but came under pressure from Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 authorities for “failure” to abandon Formalism

Formalism (art)

In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...

 and adapt to the dogmas of Social realism

Social realism

Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...

. Eventually, he was dismissed from the Academy in 1948.

External links

• David Kakabadze’s photography. Georgian Museum of Photography.
• Website about David Kakabadze