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

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

Childhood and youth

While it was not exactly possible to establish in which year the Georgian artist Pirosmani was born. Art critics 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 in the household. However, work on the ground did not capture him. Every free moment he devoted to drawing. I recreated everything that surrounded him on old wrapping paper with the help of a pencil stick: clusters of grapes, a cracked jug, a hounded dog ...

At the age of eight, a boy loses his father, and soon a mother with an older brother. Since then, he has earned his living himself. He walks around the surrounding villages and is interrupted by minor part-time work. Naturally, in such a difficult life situation about any education, and even more artistic, and there could be no talk. However, Niko nevertheless learned to read in Russian and Georgian.

The path to art

Since his youth, the future artist Niko Pirosmani took painting lessons from wandering masters. At them he has adopted ability to paint signboards for shops and inns. In the eighties, Niko made an attempt to open a workshop of artistic painting 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 money in dairy trading. However, Nico was a creative man, trade was alien to him. But he received a small income from a dairy shop, and that was his entrepreneurial end.

The beginning of the twentieth century was the whole epoch in Pirosmani's work. The artist completely devotes himself to art. He again goes back to making signage, and also enjoys creating decorative panels. It was during this period that Niko draws a lot on an oilcloth using self-made paints. Especially he succeeded in black. Pirosmani added ash to the ash, an infusion of oak bark and a couple of drops of oil. The glues were white or black. And there, where it was necessary to display these shades, he simply left the unpainted areas. So the artist has developed one of his unique techniques. Especially impressive, he looks at portraits, giving the painting an extraordinary depth and piercing.

First successes

In the tenth years of the twentieth century, Nico was paid attention in professional circles. Artist-futurist Kirill Zdanevich acquires a large number of Pirosmani paintings, some of them were written to order. Cyril's brother, Ilya, published an article about Nico "Artist-nugget" in a local newspaper. And already in March 1913, self-taught pictures were exhibited at an exhibition in Moscow. Of course, it was not a personal exhibition, but nevertheless personal grandiose success for a poor peasant from a Georgian village.

In 1916, at last managed to organize an exhibition where Pirosmani's works were exclusively represented. Nugget has received a certain fame. He was invited to the Society of Georgian Artists, his works were bought for private collections. However, despite this, the artist Pirosmani, whose name became associated with authentic creativity, died in poverty and poverty.

A Trace 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 pictures do not carry in themselves anything pompous, superfluous, superficial. Only the simplicity of the perception of life, no matter what it may be. Nico drew quickly. Could create a picture in just a few days. He did not like to correct or modify anything in the work - as it happened, it did.

The main motifs in the work of Niko Pirosmani are animalistic. The artist portrayed the animals with a look of human eyes, touching, which seems to be about to burst into tears. Nico's friends claimed that when Pisrosmani depicted animals, he actually painted himself more than a giraffe or lamb. Due to the fact that they were performed in original technique, the animals looked especially vulnerable and lonely.

Also one of the favorite themes was the image of feasts and feasts. Rich tables are full of food, wine is poured by the river, people are having fun, forgetting about the hardships of life. All this had a huge contrast with the realities of the artist's life - poor, hungry, lonely. He painted Pirosmani and portraits, but often not from nature, but simply redraw the image from the photo.

Preserved not so many works of the artist's hand-self-taught. Basically, we can evaluate the creativity of Pirosmani by his signs for shops and taverns.

The most famous paintings

Niko Pirosmani is an artist whose pictures amaze with their piercing. "Actress Margarita" is a work that was once exhibited in the Louvre. They say that even the Frenchwoman herself, pictured on the canvas, came to the exhibition, and she stared at the painting for a long time, never taking her eyes off. The artist emphasized the elegance of the leg of the actress, the slender waist of the girl. With great love he painted Margarita, for which he once went on a desperate step.

The work "A childless millionaire and poor with children" seems to show what true wealth is. Dry hemp trees in the background emphasize the meaninglessness of life, which can not be perpetuated in descendants.

In the painting "Grapes" you can see the artistic development of Pirosmani. He used the reception of the perspective image - vineyards, stretching afar, emphasizing the fertile, rich Georgian land. The artist also drew light through the leaves - an attempt to play with light and shadow.

What was he like?

The artist Pirosmani, whose name is now known throughout the world, was a mystery to contemporaries and remained an unsolved mystery for us. At the end of 1910, fans of the artist began to walk around the village and collect information about him, to make up if not a biography, then at least an approximate portrait of Nico. From the peasants' reviews we know that Pirosmani possessed an explosive character and an unbalanced temper. Straight, emotional, desperate. The neighbors said that the artist had seven Fridays in the week, as if he were not of this world. Such gossip reinforced Nico's own stories that he sees the saints and his brush "writes itself".

Confused Trace

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

It is said that Nico had a notebook with which he never parted and constantly made notes 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 the meeting with him and personal impressions.

Interesting facts about Niko Pirosmani

• In 1969, the personal exhibition of Niko Pirosmani was held in the Louvre.
• The story of the unhappy love of the poor artist from the song "A Million Crimson Roses" was taken from the life of Niko Pirosmani. The artist spent all his savings to endow the French actress Margarita de Sèvres who arrived in Tiflis.
• The picture "Arsenal mountain at night" was sold for $ 1.2 million at Christie's auction. The work was presented in the section "Russian art", which aroused dissatisfaction of the Georgian community.
• The artist Pirosmani, whose biography is filled with tragic moments, inspired the creativity of many creators. About him filmed three films (one of them is short). Nico devoted poems Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Voznesensky, Yaroslav Smelyakov.