Lado Gudiashvili

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and the turnover and tacking edges have been strengthened with a thin strip-lining. There is a conventional wooden keyed stretcher. A number of areas of repair are evident on the reverse of the canvas. These would appear to be reinforcing tears or fractures to the canvas and the largest is in the lower left corner as viewed from the reverse. There are also smaller repairs in the upper right as viewed from the reverse. Paint surface The paint surface has a very uneven varnish layer and the lines of repair are raised and clearly visible. The present method of repair has not been sufficiently strong to hold the fracture lines in an even plane and they are therefore visually distracting. I would suggest that lining the canvas would be a preferable treatment of these areas of damage. The largest area of repair is in the lower right of the composition, running through the feet of the man in the foreground, the wine bottle and green grass. Other retouchings are: 1) on the shoes of the two men in the upper part of the composition, 2) an area on the elbow of the man uppermost in the composition, 3) a large area on this same man's trousers which measures approximately 12 x 3 cm, and 4) retouchings covering the raised fracture lines mentioned above. Summary The painting is therefore in stable condition but the restoration carried out has not successfully disguised the fracture lines. I would be confident however that should the canvas be lined and the paint surface cleaned, restored and revarnished, these lines would no longer be visible in natural light and the overall appearance would be significantly improved.
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We believe Gudiashvili executed this work in the 1940s based on his sketch from 1920.

"Paris... I could go on saying that word for ever. It has a magic power for me" Gudiashvili wrote in his memoirs, "...my life was struck by an extraordinary period of inspiration at this time, bringing with it a tangible creative surge". The Dreamers of Ortachala belongs to the most acclaimed series of this period which depicts the bohemian world of Old Tbilisi, begun in Georgia with Khachi (1919) and continued over the six years spent in Paris. With over 100,000 artists in the city, Gudiashvili describes the "fierce battle for survival, for one's place in life, for glory... People avidly yearned for everything that was new". The originality of Gudiashvili's work was identified immediately by the influential art critic Maurice Raynal who famously declared: "You will fall in love with Georgia looking at Lado Gudiashvili's paintings". Yet it was not depictions of an exotic rural Arcadia that impressed Raynal: on the contrary, "From your pictures I can deduce that your people have suffered in the crucible of destructive warfare over several centuries". The poetic reverie of The Dreamers of Ortachala contains the distinctive melancholic and contemplative elements that intrigued Raynault, delicately synthesised with the well-documented influences of Giotto, Picasso, Cézanne and Byzantine and Qajar art.

Gudiashvili's command of line, acknowledged to be at its peak during his Paris period, is beautifully exemplified in the supple, elongated limbs in the offered lot. He was able to stretch the ornamental capacity of the line to its limits "like a taut bowstring" as P.Pavlenko writes "or, as it were, like a strip of steel dangerously bowed. If one invisible joint were to fail, it feels as though the whole thing might fly out of shape and the drawing, quivering, would straighten up into a single line like an old knife" (T.Kobaladze, Lado Gudiashvili: tainstvo krasoty, kniga vospominanii, Tbilisi, Merani, 1988)

From the mid-1920s his canvases became more allegorical, but conversely lost the interesting distortions, foreshortenings and compositional patterns of his early work. As Alexei Mikhailov comments on the preparatory sketch for the offered lot (Gudiashvili collection, Tbilisi), "By depicting the figures in contrasting positions (the legs of one against the head of another), the artist connects the figures with a single spiralling line, turning the composition into a locked whole... yet the decorative melody of line does not interfere with the revelation of their psychological state" (A.Mikhailov, Lado Gudiashvili, Moscow, [1968]).