Niko Pirosmani is a primitive artist. Biography, pictures, interesting facts from life

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Niko Pirosmani is an artist whose life is practically not documented anywhere, as if there was no such person at all. But he was. He was and created his uncomplicated and piercing paintings as simply as he lived.

Childhood and youth

So far, it has not been possible to establish exactly in what year the Georgian artist Pirosmani was born. Art historians suggest that this happened in 1862. Niko Piromanoshvili lived in a poor peasant family in the village of Mirzaani. He was the youngest child and helped his father with the housework. However, the work on the ground did not capture him. He devoted every free minute to drawing. He recreated on old wrapping paper with the help of a pencil stub everything that surrounded him: bunches of grapes, a cracked jug, a short dog …

At the age of eight, the boy loses his father, and soon his mother and older brother. Since then, he has earned his living on his own. He walks around the surrounding villages and is interrupted by small part-time jobs. Naturally, in such a difficult life situation, there could be no question of any education, and even more so artistic. However, Niko still learned to read in Russian and Georgian.

The Path to Art

From his youth, the future artist Niko Pirosmani took painting lessons from itinerant masters. From them he adopted the ability to paint signs for shops and taverns. In the 1980s, Niko attempted to open a painting studio with his friend, also an artist. However, this idea failed miserably: there were practically no orders and the workshop had to be closed.

Having accumulated a small capital, working as a conductor on the railway, Pirosmani invests in the dairy trade. However, Niko was a creative person, trade was alien to him. But he received a small income from a dairy shop, and that was the end of his entrepreneurial efforts.

The beginning of the 20th century was a whole era in the work of Pirosmani. The artist devotes himself entirely to art. He again returns to the manufacture of signs, and is also fond of creating decorative panels. It was during this period that Niko painted a lot on oilcloth with the help of self-made paints. He was especially successful with black. Pirosmani added furnace soot, an infusion of oak bark and a couple of drops of oil to the ashes. Oilcloths were white or black. And where it was necessary to display these shades, he simply left unpainted areas. So the artist developed one of his unique techniques. It looks especially impressive in portraits, giving the picture an extraordinary depth and poignancy.

First successes

In the 1910s, Niko was noticed in professional circles. Futurist artist Kirill Zdanevich acquires a large number of paintings by Pirosmani, some of them were commissioned. Kirill's brother, Ilya, published an article about Niko called "Nugget Artist" in the local newspaper. And already in March 1913, self-taught paintings were exhibited at an exhibition in Moscow. Of course, this was not a personal exhibition, but nevertheless a personal grandiose success for a poor peasant from a Georgian village.

In 1916, finally managed to arrange an exhibition, which presented only the work of Pirosmani. The nugget gained some notoriety. He was invited to the Society of Georgian Artists, his works began to be bought for private collections. However, despite this, the artist Pirosmani, whose name has become associated with authentic creativity, died in poverty and poverty.

A footprint in art

Primitivism - the style of painting, characteristic of the artist Pirosmani, is the artistic embodiment of children's drawings. Naive in their execution and honest in their emotional component, these paintings do not carry anything pompous, superfluous, superficial. Only the simplicity of perception of life, whatever it may be. Niko drew quickly. Could create a painting in just a few days. He did not like to correct or modify anything in the work - as it turned out, it turned out.

The main motifs in the work of Niko Pirosmani are animalistic. The artist depicted animals with the look of human eyes, touching, on which, it seems, tears are about to well up. Niko's friends claimed that by portrayinganimals, Pirosmani actually draws himself more than a giraffe or a lamb. Due to the fact that they were performed in an original technique, the animals looked especially defenseless and lonely.

Also one of the favorite topics was the image of feasts and feasts. Rich tables are bursting with food, wine flows like water, people have fun, forgetting about the hardships of life. All this had a huge contrast with the realities of the artist's life - poor, hungry, lonely. Pirosmani also drew portraits, but often not from nature, but simply redrawn the image from a photograph.

Not many works by a self-taught artist have survived. Basically, we can appreciate the work of Pirosmani by his signs for shops and taverns.

The most famous paintings

Niko Pirosmani is an artist whose paintings amaze with their poignancy. "The Actress Marguerite" is a work that was once exhibited in the Louvre. They say that even the Frenchwoman herself, depicted on the canvas, came to the exhibition and looked at the picture for a long time, without taking her eyes off. The artist emphasized the elegance of the actress's legs, the girl's thin waist. With great love, he portrayed Margarita, for whom he once took a desperate step.

The work “A Childless Millionaire and a Poor Woman with Children” seems to show what true we alth is. Dry tree stumps in the background emphasize the meaninglessness of life, which cannot be immortalized in posterity.

In the painting "Grape Harvest" you can see the artistic development of Pirosmani. He applied the image techniqueperspectives - vineyards stretching into the distance, emphasizing the fertile, rich Georgian land. The artist also painted light breaking through the leaves - an attempt to play with light and shadow.

What was he like?

The artist Pirosmani, whose name is now known to the whole world, was a mystery to his contemporaries and remained an unsolved mystery for us. In the late 1910s, admirers of the artist's work began to walk around the village and collect information about him in order to compile, if not a biography, then at least an approximate portrait of Niko. From the reviews of the peasants, we know that Pirosmani had an explosive character and an unbalanced disposition. Straightforward, emotional, desperate. Neighbors said that the artist had seven Fridays a week, as if he were not of this world. Such gossip was reinforced by the stories of Niko himself that he sees the saints and his brush “paints by itself.”

Tangled Trail

It is known that the artist corresponded with his sister, but these letters have not been preserved. They were burned by the girl herself, apparently frightened by the fact that in the nearby villages strangers began to ask more and more questions about her brother.

They say that Niko had a notebook, which he never parted with and constantly wrote in it. But even during the life of the artist, these notes were lost somewhere. And only shortly before his death, Pirosmani met educated people who understood the value of Niko's life and recorded the events of meeting with him and personal impressions.

Interesting facts about Niko Pirosmani

• In 1969, Niko Pirosmani's solo exhibition took place at the Louvre.
• The story of the unhappy love of a poor artist from the song "A Million Scarlet Roses" was taken from the life of Niko Pirosmani. The artist spent all his savings to give gifts to the French actress Marguerite de Sèvres, who arrived in Tiflis.
• Painting "Arsenal Mountain at night" was sold for 1.2 million dollars at Christie's auction. The work was presented in the "Russian Art" section, which caused discontent among the Georgian community.
• The artist Pirosmani, whose biography is filled with tragic moments, inspired the work of many creators. Three films have been made about him (one of them is a short). Niko was dedicated to poems by Bulat Okudzhava, Andrey Voznesensky, Yaroslav Smelyakov.