L evan Lagidze is one of Georgia’s most significant living artists. Widely exhibited interna tionally, Lagidze’s abstracted and philosophical works are collected by leading museums worldwide, including the Tretyakov Gallery and Museum of Modern Art in Russia, the National Picture Gallery in Georgia, and the Zimmerli Museum in the U.S. Born in 1958 in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of the Soviet Union), Lagidze graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1981. He served as Chairman of Georgia´s Young Artists’ Union from 1986 to 1989. In the early 1990s he founded the Lagidze Gallery, supporting struggling Georgian artists in the economically turbulent and violent decade following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the calmer times of 2011, the gallery re-opened under the same name to showcase Levan Lagidze’s own works.
Creating a composition is like “measuring eternity with careful steps”.
Defying categorisation, Lagidze’s art escapes definition except through a metaphor. He says that creating a composition is like “measuring eternity with careful steps”, where a blank canvas demands and promises complete immersion into the subject matter. In this state, concepts such as distance and time dissolve into an all encompassing here and now. As Nana Jorjadze, the Georgian film director, scriptwriter and actress very aptly wrote, “Inside every square of Levan Lagidze’s work is a separate universe. His world, his art, is a great galaxy. Perceiving his paintings depends upon distance: from afar, one sees a large canvas, but as one moves ever closer one’s approach seems endless and one discovers ever more numerous and increasingly minute universes within.”
“Inside every square of Levan Lagidze’s work is a separate universe”.
And yet Lagidze’s abstract works are not at all abstract. The combination of colours and title paints a vivid emotional image. Our eyes might not immediately recognise it but our soul does. If there is such a thing, his paintings are a hyperrealism for the soul. You need only look at “Coming Back”, “Spring. After the Rain” or “Autumn Garden” to be transported to a specific time and place in our memories. For Lagidze, “there is no contemporary or not contemporary art. All artists that have ever immersed themselves in the language of art are in the present”. His art aims to share a common experience; to unite rather than disrupt or shock. Bach Exercises (19 November – 8 December 2018, London), is the first major selling exhibition abroad that Lagidze has agreed to do in 20 years because, besides museum exhibitions, he is known for showing only at his own gallery in Tbilisi. The title, “Bach Exercises”, reflects the paintings’ cadence, where the myriad of tiny universes built up along a grid intermingle in a symphony of rich chromatic notes, creating universal images and narrations through abstraction.
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