Salome With The Head Of St John The Baptist, 17th Century Studio of GUIDO RENI

Sunset Port Landscape, circa 1690 after Claude LORRAIN (1600-1682) Huge 17th/18th Century classical harbour landscape with figures and moored ships at sunset, oil on canvas. Huge and magnificent landscape of an extensive view of the harbour and ancient architecture. Typical of the works of Claude Lorrain. Framed in a 17th Century gilt frame...

Nude Bathers, 19th Century School of HENRY SCOTT TUKE (1858-1929) - signed indistinctly Large Early 20th century scene of nude swimmers at the beach, oil on canvas, signed indistin...

Summer. 2021. Oil on canvas, 70x70 cm Colorful bright artwork with two girls Nugzar Avtandilovich Kahiani was born in Poti, Georgia in 1952. He studied at the Art College named after Nikoladze. Then he went to serve in the Soviet Army from1970 to 1972. After completing his military service he entered the Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Industry at the faculty of artistic metal, from which he graduated in 1986. During his studies, he has been actively engaged in painting. His favorite artists are Gauguin, El Greco, Botticelli, Turner and Picasso. Works of artistic stone He worked also with stone, cornelian and onyx. But his soul gravitated to bright and blustery color, and so he has became engaged in painting. At first his paintings were quiet, with muted tonal gamma. The color image was built on the play of hues and halftones. Such a careful elaboration of color educates the taste, sharpness and delicacy of vision. Gradually, the painter became more experienced, and his paintings acquired assurance and power of maturity, blooming in colorful brilliancy. Nugzar's color preferences The color of Nugzar’s paintings is deep and multi-layered. It is woven of infinite number of hues and filled with light. At first sight it may be difficult to recognize the shapes in the play of flickering color dabs. The figures appear gradually, they draw the first breath just before our eyes, crystallizing from the color heap. The painter is attracted by major tonality and motives that years ago could be called “the gallant feasts” - repasts, assiduities, music parties, and airings. After somewhat daemonic, infernal imagery of early paintings, it has appeared the theme of “Le joie de vivre,” the joy of life. Source of inspiration Born in the ancient Kolkhida, he keeps the blissful pagan feel of entirety and completeness of being. It is embodied almost literally in his favorite personage auroral gorgeous-bodied beauty of a girl. He grants these forms even to Olympian inhabitants - Aphrodite, Athene, Arthemide, let alone the Bacchants. I remember unwittingly that Niko Pirosmani similarly painted on his impoverished buckrams the luxurious prince repasts and languid, elephantine beauties. Working style But his style is not bounded by grotesque parody, as well as the irony is not the only aspect of his world outlook. In his landscapes we can catch the ecstatic admiration with Nature. In contradistinction to his favorite impressionists, he never paints from nature and never bears in mind the particular place. It is just a blooming Earth, studied very closely, so that the trees are cut by the edges of the painting, and at the same time it is a bird’s eye view revealing infinite, boundless spaces. Nougzar says that the landscape for him is first of all a color ensemble. He can just leaf through the illustrated journal, nourishing his eye with color in various combinations, and so get the impulse to create a ‘physical’ landscape image. Probably, his landscapes are no less fantastical than his figure compositions, but such is his talent, his mission - to make the world more beautiful and gentle than it is in reality. Exhibitions Nugzar Kakhiani...

A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good intentions of critical theorists questioning the va...