Visiting scholar to discuss Yale Art Gallery's works by Russian abstract artist Kakabadzé

The Yale University Art Gallery's collection of works by abstract artist David Nestorovitch Kakabadzé (1889-1952) will be the subject of a talk on Tuesday, Nov. 10, by Ketevan Kintsurashvili of the Georgian Art History Institute of the Georgian Academy of Sciences in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Her lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 3 p.m. in the education room of the art gallery, located at 1111 Chapel St.

Kintsurashvili, who is currently at Yale on a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, is the author of a forthcoming book about Kakabadzé, which will be published in St. Petersburg in the year 2000. Two years ago, she received a Soros Foundation grant in Prague for research on her project "David Kakabadzé's work in the background of the 'The Société Anonyme' collection." She came to the University for further work on the Société Anonyme collection, which is part of the Yale Art Gallery.

The Yale collection boasts Kakabadzé's only known sculpture, titled "Z (The Speared Fish)," created circa 1925. The work is on permanent display on the second floor of the gallery. In addition, the Yale Art Gallery owns six relief constructions and 19 watercolors by the artist, which were given to the University by Katherine Dreier and the Société Anonyme in 1941.

Kakabadzé was born in Koukhi in Georgia in 1889. In 1919, he was one of the three artists awarded money by the Georgian government to study in Paris. His eight years there, from 1919 to 1927, have been considered the most productive and creative of his career. Though his early works in Paris reflected the cubist style, he later rejected this style in favor of more abstract sculpture and painting. In 1928, he was forced by the Russian ban on abstract art to turn to realistic landscape and city views. He designed sets for the theater and was an art instructor at the Academy of Arts of Tbilisi until 1948, when he was ousted because of his record as an erstwhile formalist. The artist died in obscurity and poverty in Tbilisi in 1952.