Culture
Chkhenkeli M. Mutual Enrichment of the Russian and Georgian National Art Schools under the Direct Influence of the French Art Culture (Second Half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th cc.). - Historical-Ethnological, Linguistic Researches. - Book 1. - Tbilisi - 2002 - 61-92 pp. - in Georgian.
Development of the cultural relationship between Russia and Georgia had been closely bound with Europe, in particular, with France which was the main guiding point of the cultural life of Russia at the end of the XIX - in the beginning of the XX centuries. During that period many representatives of Georgian fine art (R. Gvelesiani, A. Beridze, G. Gabashvili, A. Mrevlishvili, M. Toidze, G. Tatishvili and others) were getting education at the institutions of higher education of Moscow and St.-Petersburg where they became concerned in all modern trends of the European culture. The center of the world culture - Paris, had widely opened its door to the Russian artists as well as to the Georgian ones. L. Gudiashvili, D. Kakabadze, Sh. Kikodze and E. Akhvlediani took part in many art exhibitions and in 1924 they founded the Union of Cultural Workers of Georgia. Such concern with the avant-garde of the world cultural events enriched the treasury of the Georgian culture with the features of those tendencies which had occurred in the world culture during that comparatively short period of history (impressionism, neoimpressionism, postimpressionism, avant-gardism, symbolism, modernism, primitivism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, abstractionism, supre-macism, dadaism, purism, expressionism, surrealism). Those tendencies were embodied in the works of G. Gabashvili, A. Mrevlishvili nd the great Georgian representative of primitivism - Niko Pirosmanashvili (Pirosmani). His art is amongst the works of such individualists as French Rousseau and Russian Larionov. Sh. Kikodze, V. Pagava, V. Enukidze, F. Varlamishvili, M. Bilanishvili, V. Jorjadze, T. Gambashidze and others had tied their lives with Paris for ever. Their works with the pronounced Georgian motives and essence are still exhibited at many famous art galleries of Russia and France.