David Kakabadze

b. 1889 — d. 1952

David Kakabadze wore many hats: modernist artist, film director, stage designer, experimenter, inventor of glassless stereo cinema, art researcher and theorist. He was one of the most significant figures of Georgian modernism. He was born in 1889, in the village of Kukhi, Georgia. After finishing Kutaisi gymnasium, he studied at the faculty of Natural Sciences within St. Petersburg University. Simultaneously, he worked in the studio of the painter L. Dimitryev-Kavkazsky. 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. In 1926, the founders of ‘Société Anonyme’ -- Catherin Drier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, with collaboration of Wassily Kandinsky, Kurt and Helen Schwitters, Fernand Leger, Heinrich Kampendonk and Anton Giulio Bragaglia -- arranged a big international exhibition of modern art at the Brooklyn Museum. For this reason, Société Anonyme which was also known as an “Experimental Museum,” purchased Davit Kakabadze’s works. Among the works was the sculpture “Z,” which today is kept at Yale University Art Gallery together with his other works. See the list of participants in the catalogue of the exhibition dedicated to the 60th anniversary of Kandinsky at http://artgallery.yale.edu/socanon/ as well as some pages of the catalogue on our website. The Brooklyn Museum exhibition opened on 19 November, 1926 and closed on 1 January, 1927. And this was the fatal year when Kakabadze returned to the annexed and Soviet-dominated Georgia after travelling to Germany, Italy and Greece. Indeed, after returning to Georgia and mounting a one-man exhibition at the “Orient Hotel” in 1928, he produced no art until 1933. The artist himself called these years his “silent period.” In 1930s his works, especially of Parisian period are considered formalistic. He was forced to compromise and in 1933 creates graphic series “Rioni Power Station” while in 1940-1950s creates pictures on industrial themes. On July 12, 1948 the order was issued to the Tbilisi Academy of Art that he “could not instruct students according to the socialist realism method and he was dismissed from his position from the 1948-49 academic year.” Davit Kakabadze died unexpectedly on 10 May, 1952.