Background
Kakabadze was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Kukhi near the town of Khoni.
1925
Paris, France
Left to right: D. Kakabadze, L. Gudiashvili, E. Nakhvardiani.
David Kakabadze became a professor of Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (on picture) in 1928.
St. Petersburg University which Kakabadze finished in 1916.
David Kakabadze (left) with Shalva Kikodze.
Kakabadze was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Kukhi near the town of Khoni.
Sponsored by local philanthropists, he studied natural sciences at St. Petersburg University from which he graduated in 1916. At the same time, he attended painting classes at the studio of Dmitroyev-Kavkazsky and did a research in old Georgian arts.
A multi-talent, he was also an art scholar and innovator in the field of cinematography as well as an amateur photographer. Kakabadze's works are notable for combining innovative interpretation of European "Leftist" art with Georgian national traditions, on which he was an expert. After a brief period of working as a painter and educator in Tbilisi, he went to Paris where he lived from 1919 to 1927.
He partook in the Société des Artistes Indépendants exhibitions and joint exhibitions with the Georgian artists Lado Gudiashvili and Shalva Kikodze. The cycle of landscapes reproducing the nature of Kakabadze's native province of Imereti is some of the most interesting of his early works. During his stay in Paris, Kakabadze was attracted by "subjectless painting," and worked on problems of pictorial technique, occasionally using metal, mirror glass, stained glass and other such materials in place of paints.
He soon went over to an even more "Leftist" position, and paid generous tribute to cubism. He lectured on various aspects of visual arts in Paris and, developing his interest in kinetic form, in 1923 he constructed a film camera that produced the illusion of relief and thus became one of the pioneers of three-dimensional cinema. By the mid- 1920s he had rejected his cubist-influenced style in favor of more abstract sculpture and painting.
Having return to Georgia in 1927, Kakabadze continued his Imereti themes in new monumental decorative landscapes, including industrial landscapes. Around the same time, he collaborated with the leading Georgian theatre director Kote Marjanishvili to produce several set designs for Marjanishvili's theatre in Kutaisi. In 1931, he also produced a documental film "The Old Monuments of Georgia".
Kakabadze became a professor at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1928, but came under pressure from Soviet authorities for "failure" to abandon Formalism and adapt to the dogmas of Social realism. Eventually, he was dismissed from the Academy in 1948.
Imereti
Imereti
Paris
Self-portrait
Bretagne
Bretagne
Elevator in Poti
Sailboats
Bretagne
Cubist Composition
Imereti
Abstraction
Imeretian still life
Paris
Abstraction
Cubist self-portrait
Cubist Composition
Composition
Abstraction
Imereti-My Mother
Composition
Abstraction
Red mountain
Bretagne
Processing gumbrine in the vicinity if Kutaisi
Paris
Bretagne
Sailboats
Sailboats
Composition
Svaneti
Abstraction
Bridge
Mining at Kazbegi
Imereti
Abstraction
Imereti. Red road
Gipsy Camp
Self-portrait
Sailboats
Cubist Composition
Sailboats
Abstraction
Sailboats
Industrial landscape
Paris
Industry
Rioni power-station
Quotes from others about the person
Katherine Dreier writes about David Kakabadze: "He was one of the most interesting among all modern art painters and sculptors, partly due to his extraordinary love towards his homeland and, partly due to his scientific training, which made him a creative artist of superb quality”.