"Possible worlds" Automatic translate

The Heydar Aliyev Center, together with the Russian Academy of Arts and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, present the exhibition “Possible Worlds”. The project will continue a series of anniversary exhibitions of the Russian-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the author.

The exhibition “Possible Worlds” presents the results of Zurab Tsereteli’s fruitful creative career, including works created under the influence of his meetings with world masters: Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Robert Rauschenberg. The project will collect more than 30 works from Moscow, Tbilisi and London, including paintings, sculptures and enamels, covering the artist’s long career. A game with time and reality, fantastic and everyday - the audience of the exhibition in Baku will see the whole variety of topics of Tsereteli’s works.

Zurab Tsereteli grew up in Soviet Georgia, worked with bronze, stone, glass, wood mosaic, but only in the late 1960s. he began to receive widespread recognition and government orders. Tsereteli stood out among the artists of his generation: monumental works that combined images of children’s tales and dreams, archaeological and ethnographic symbols with a powerful creative impulse became especially noticeable during the period of the establishment of more free forms of artistic expression in the cultural climate of the USSR. Monumentality can also be traced in his sculptures, commissioned in different countries: bright monuments were erected in many cities, including London, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo. Large-scale works created in a monumental expressive manner express the important idea of ​​complete freedom in art.

Tsereteli can rightfully be called a citizen of the world: his workshops are located in his native Tbilisi, Moscow, Paris and New York. Work in each of the four cities contributed to the formation of his individual style. According to the artist himself, thanks to a meeting with Picasso and Chagall in 1946 in France, he radically redefined his understanding of the creative process. The skillful ease of the masters in the transitions from painting and graphics to ceramics and sculpture inspired him to create a new series of works. Picasso’s influence is evident in Inessa (1968), which he wrote shortly after visiting Picasso’s workshop in Paris. The famous Tsereteli sculpture “My Favorite Artists” (2009) represents Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and Van Gogh, a year earlier he created sculptural images of Pirosmani and Henri Russo. Tsereteli owns a place in the ranks of neo-expressionists, including Fernando Botero, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Georg Baselitz. Russian artists also influenced the work of Tsereteli: abstract expressionism of Kandinsky or Suprematism of Malevich was transformed into a rich palette of recognizable red and blue colors of Tsereteli.

The author’s personal exhibitions dedicated to the anniversary will also be held in 2019 in Beijing and Liechtenstein.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Zurab Tsereteli was born in Tbilisi (Georgia) in 1934 and graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1958. Selected solo exhibitions: New Manege, Moscow (1998 and 2004), UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (2007), San Salvatore Museum, Rome (2011), Palazzo della Gran Guard, Verona (2016), Palace of Festivals and Congresses, Cannes (2017). In 1995, Zurab Tsereteli founded the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the first state museum in Russia devoted entirely to contemporary art, which officially opened in 1999. In 1997, Tsereteli was elected president of the Russian Academy of Arts. In 2001, the Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery, which is part of the Russian Academy of Arts, opened in Moscow, and in 2012, the artist founded the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi. Zurab Tsereteli was declared UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador (2007), he is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg, Austria (2009), holder of the Order of the Legion of Honor of the French Government (2010), winner of the For Life in Art Award and Giuseppe International Award Sciacca from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome (2011), the UNESCO Medal of the Five Continents (2014) and a member of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts (2015).