Imereti. Red road by David Kakabadzé

1918

Imereti. Red road

David Kakabadzé's Profile Picture

David Kakabadzé

1889 - 1952

Location

Private Collection

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Curatorial notes

David Kakabadzé made this painting, Imereti. Red road, using oil on canvas. What strikes me is the way the landscape is broken up into these flattened, geometric shapes. It's almost like he’s diagramming the world, turning fields and hills into a puzzle of color. The paint is applied pretty thinly, but there's a real physicality to it. You can see how the brushstrokes create these little ridges and valleys on the surface. I keep coming back to that red road, it’s like a vein running through the landscape. It's not just a road, it's a symbol of connection, of movement, of the lifeblood of this place. Kakabadzé's approach reminds me a bit of early Cubism, but with a folk art twist. It's like he's taking these avant-garde ideas and grounding them in his own personal experience of the world. Ultimately, this painting is a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between tradition and innovation, representation and abstraction.