MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Picasso & Niko Pirosmani

(Picture: author unknown; portrait of Niko Pirosmani)

Picasso, Pirosmani

(6.12.2023) Pablo Picasso knew of painter Niko Pirosmani because he knew another artist from Georgia who had known Pirosmani: Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevič). Pirosmani had also painted a portrait of Iliazd (see picture on the right), and Iliazd was keen to promote Pirosmani, by writing an article on him, which later – at the end of Picasso’s life – Iliazd also republished in translation, to which Pablo Picasso, at the very end of his life, contributed an etching, the representation of an old painter.

(Picture: Argentina)

We do not discuss these relationships, which perhaps belong into the wider frame of Picasso’s relations with Russian, Georgian, East European artists, but only aim to indicate the sources which allow the student of Picasso to know of them. Sources that are to be found, on the one hand, in a memoir: the memoir of journalist Georges Tabaraud, who remembered the encounter of pianist Sviatoslav Richter and Pablo Picasso (Tab 2002, p. 198ff.; see also here), and in the beautiful catalogue of an exhibition that had been dedicated to Picasso’s many contributions to books, and also to artist’s books (Basel/Bonn 1995/96, p. 188f; a summary also in: Johannes M. Fox, Picassos Welt. Ein Lexikon, Halle 2008). Tabaraud also recalled that Picasso had owned a book on Pirosmani, a book, to come full circle, with illustrations.

Full Bibliographical References:
Basel/Bonn 1995/96
Katharina Schmidt (ed.), Pablo Picasso. Die illustrierten Bücher. Eine Privatsammlung – ergänzt durch Werke aus dem Kupferstichkabinett Basel, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel / Kunstmuseum Bonn, Ostfildern-Ruit 1995;
Tab 2002
Georges Tabaraud, Mes années Picasso, Paris 2002

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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