Kondakhsazov Robert

1937 — 2010

Robert Kondakhsazov was born in 1937 in Tbilisi. He graduated from Tbilisi Academy of Arts. After graduation he decided not to exhibit his works in order to save them from ideology and market. He was involved in interior design, book graphics and scenography. In 1973 he received a diploma of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and All-Russia Theatrical Society (VTO) for scenic design of performances at the Georgia Puppetry Theater. Starting from 1964 till 1975 Robert Kondakhsazov regularly took part in annual exhibitions of posters at the State Picture Gallery of Georgia.

In 1965 he participated in the decorative and applied arts exposition in All-Russia Exhibition Centre, Moscow. In 1987 there was a retrospective exhibition of Georgian art in Georgia and one of the artist's paintings was purchased by the exhibition fund of the administration of the exhibitions of the USSR Union of Artists. And in 1988 a retrospective exhibition of Georgian painters with the participation of R. Kondakhsazov was organized in Moscow, at the Central House of Artist.

At the end of the 1990s Kondakhsazov dramatically changed his artistic language: his art became black-and-white and his main emphasis was now placed on the structural rethinking of primal forms. In 1989 the first personal exhibition of the artist was arranged in Tbilisi followed by two others in 2000 and 2003. In 2005 theartistmovedtoMoscow. And in 2006 he had his personal shows at the Museum Center of the Russian State University for the Humanities and at the Cultural Center of the “Roslin" gallery. In 2006 he took part in the exhibition called “The Dialog of Cultures. Armenia–Russia" at the Moscow House of Nationalities, and in 2008 a personal show of the artist was organized by IBM in Moscow. In 2010 the Caucasian House in Tbilisi arranged a personal exhibition in memory of the artist and in October 2011 Kondakhsazov's artworks participated in the collective exhibition at Тhe House of the Nobleman in London.

The artist expressed his creative belief as follows:

“However it changes, art was and always will be the art of eyes and for the eyes. Plastic perception of nature discovers the beauty and perfection of the universe, makes you worship a blade of grass, a human being, a starry night — anything which is marked by the hand of the Creator. Meanwhile living in modern information environment the artist cannot be free from the impact of the preceding culture, either. He needs to interpret it, communicate with it, compare it to the surrounding world and to his/her own perception. And then it becomes evident that both archaic and modern, real and abstract are all phenomena of the same type. The world turns into one and becomes integral, you start feeling that there exist some “proto-forms" and some “proto-color" which might express the whole metaphysical picture of the world more efficiently".

Robert Kondakhsazov is a member of the Union of Artists of Russia and an honored artist of Georgia. His artworks are presented in the private collections in Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Great Britain, USA, France, Belgium, Holland, Israel and Australia.