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It is noticeable that precisely those artists who were remembered by posterity as the creators of the most colourful and cheerful pictures often led a bleak life in poverty and misery (or what they felt) themselves. Vincent van Gogh is one prominent example, Niko Pirosmani from Georgia - a pioneer of "naive painting" - another.
Pirosmani was the son of a peasant family in the region of Kakheti, in the far east of the present state of Georgia in the Caucasus. When he was eight years old, he was brought to Tbilisi by his older sister (his parents had died at an early age) and at the age of ten he had to work as a servant. He learned to read and write Russian and Georgian and taught himself to paint. This passion did not let go of him all his life.
At first it seemed that he was pursuing a classic self-made man career. After his time as a domestic helper he became a railway conductor; in 1893 he founded a dairy shop and ran it until about the turn of the century. But then he left his middle-class existence. As a homeless man in the Tiflis train station district, he kept his head above water with odd jobs and got food and sleeping places in the restaurants by "paying" the owners with paintings. In April 1918 he died lonely and helpless in a cellar. Not even his grave was registered. In those bitter months of lost war, Spanish flu and the double revolution, hundreds of thousands of Russians died of hunger and exhaustion.
In those grim times, people could use any cheering up, and Niko Pirosmani provided it. Simple, clear forms, colourful contrasts - Pirosmani painted people, nature and landscapes, for example, as a small boy would understand them, and thus became a pioneer of "naive painting". One of his main themes was the society of his time, the contrast between rich and poor. Although he had been present in Moscow salons since 1913 (his friends organized an exhibition of Pirosmani's complete works in Tbilisi in 1916), this did not free him from his desolate situation. Perhaps he did not want to or could not live any differently? We do not know.
In return we know that the French singer Margot des Sèvres became immortalized by Pirosmali's painting "The Singer Margarita", and that a stag painted by him now adorns the back of the Georgian 1-Lari note - Pirosmani himself parading on the front. He himself was immortalized as a painting by Pablo Picasso. Well over a hundred of his scenes painted on canvas, cardboard or even iron plates have found a home in the National Gallery of Tbilisi and are repeatedly presented at exhibitions all over the world.
It is noticeable that precisely those artists who were remembered by posterity as the creators of the most colourful and cheerful pictures often led a bleak life in poverty and misery (or what they felt) themselves. Vincent van Gogh is one prominent example, Niko Pirosmani from Georgia - a pioneer of "naive painting" - another.
Pirosmani was the son of a peasant family in the region of Kakheti, in the far east of the present state of Georgia in the Caucasus. When he was eight years old, he was brought to Tbilisi by his older sister (his parents had died at an early age) and at the age of ten he had to work as a servant. He learned to read and write Russian and Georgian and taught himself to paint. This passion did not let go of him all his life.
At first it seemed that he was pursuing a classic self-made man career. After his time as a domestic helper he became a railway conductor; in 1893 he founded a dairy shop and ran it until about the turn of the century. But then he left his middle-class existence. As a homeless man in the Tiflis train station district, he kept his head above water with odd jobs and got food and sleeping places in the restaurants by "paying" the owners with paintings. In April 1918 he died lonely and helpless in a cellar. Not even his grave was registered. In those bitter months of lost war, Spanish flu and the double revolution, hundreds of thousands of Russians died of hunger and exhaustion.
In those grim times, people could use any cheering up, and Niko Pirosmani provided it. Simple, clear forms, colourful contrasts - Pirosmani painted people, nature and landscapes, for example, as a small boy would understand them, and thus became a pioneer of "naive painting". One of his main themes was the society of his time, the contrast between rich and poor. Although he had been present in Moscow salons since 1913 (his friends organized an exhibition of Pirosmani's complete works in Tbilisi in 1916), this did not free him from his desolate situation. Perhaps he did not want to or could not live any differently? We do not know.
In return we know that the French singer Margot des Sèvres became immortalized by Pirosmali's painting "The Singer Margarita", and that a stag painted by him now adorns the back of the Georgian 1-Lari note - Pirosmani himself parading on the front. He himself was immortalized as a painting by Pablo Picasso. Well over a hundred of his scenes painted on canvas, cardboard or even iron plates have found a home in the National Gallery of Tbilisi and are repeatedly presented at exhibitions all over the world.