Fine Arts Fund
The Fine Arts Fund preserves a valuable collection of Georgian, Russian, Eastern and Western European fine art. It is one of the most outstanding in Transcaucasia in terms of size and importance.
The Fine Arts, Painting and Graphics Fund preserves up to 10,000 exhibits by more than 300 Georgian artists, which fully presents the history of Georgian theater painting. The collection preserved in the Fund consists of painted portraits of theater figures, sketches of decorations and costumes, graphic compositions, Iranian miniatures, French and German engravings, and samples of color lithographs. The Fund preserves the works of artists who worked with Kote Marjanishvili: Petre Otskheli, Irakli Gamrekeli, Kirile Zdanevichi, Lado Gudiashvili, Elene Akhvlediani, Davit Kakabadze and others. The works of Tamar Abakelia, Sergo Kobuladze, Solomon Virsaladze, Ivane Askurava, Irakli Toidze, Tamar and Dimitri Tavadze, Nikoloz Kazbegi, Parna Lapiashvili, Revaz and Tengiz Mirzashvili, Vladimer and Mamia Malazoni, Giorgi Meskhishvili, Teimuraz Murvanidze, Teimuraz Ninua and others, who created an entire era in Georgian scenography and fine arts, are also preserved here. In addition to Georgian artists, the fund also contains works by Russian, Armenian, Azerbaijani and other foreign artists. It is noteworthy that the fund preserves the works of artists who were members of the “Mir Iskustvo” association formed in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called Works by representatives of the “Silver Age” of Russian painting, Konstantin Korovin, Lev Bakst, Alexander Benois, Alexander Golovin and Viktor Simov.
The most extensive collection of Georgian modernist painting is also presented here. Among more than a hundred works by Petre Otskheli, such important sketches as: “The Builder Solness” (1931), “The Dumb Men Spoke” (1931), “The Good Soldier Schweik” (1931), “Joy Street” (1932), “Bombay” (1932), “The Robbers” (1932), “Othello” (1933) are also kept here. Unique sketches for the film “The Flying Painter” (1936), designed by the same author, are also kept here.
The fund also preserves the portrait of the world-famous primitivist Niko Pirosmanashvili, “Smoking Man,” works by such famous representatives of Georgian realistic painting as: Gigo Gabashvili, Aleksandre Beridze. Brilliant canvases or sketches by outstanding members of the new Georgian painting: Shalva Kikodze, Davit Kakabadze, Sergo Kobuladze, Lado Gudiashvili and others.
Of Russian painting, the works of Mikhail Nesterov’s “Landscape by the Lake,” Konstantin Somov’s “Curtain of the Free Theater,” Alexander Benois, the founder and main ideologist of “Mir Iskustva,” the artist Leon Bakst, the director Sergei Eisenstein, and others are noteworthy.
The collection of Western European paintings includes a masterpiece of Flemish fine arts, David Teniers the Younger’s “Jealous Wife,” a still life by the Florentine artist Michelangelo Meucci, works by the French expressionist painter Fernand Léger, and the Italian poet, writer, and screenwriter Tonino Guerra.
The Oriental collection includes Qajar works. Among them, a unique papier-mâché scene “Solomon and His Court” stands out, while the Qajar miniatures preserved here are variations of world-famous paintings presented in the collections of the Hermitage and the Albert and Victoria Museums and were created in the contemporary period, that is, during the reign of Fathi Ali Shah (1797–1834).