A PAIR OF COSTUME DESIGNS BY DAVID KAKABADZE (GEORGIAN 1889-1952)
The Cleric and the Caucasian,
India ink, watercolor and gouache on paper laid on board
each: 28 x 13.5 cm (11 x 5 1/2 in.)
both signed with monogram lower right

LOT NOTES
Davit (David) Kakabadze was an important Georgian avant-garde painter and graphic artist. Born into a peasant family in the village of Kukhi (near Khoni, Georgia), Kakabdze was supported by local philantropists and went to study natural sciences at St. Petersburg University, from where he graduated in 1916. While in St. Petersburg, he studied painting with Dmitroyev-Kavkazy. From 1919 to 1927, Kakabaze live and worked in Paris, where he participated in joint exhibitions with Lado Gudiashvili and Shalva Kikodze. He also participated in the Societe des Artistes Independants exhibitions while in Paris. Returning to Georgia in 1927, Kakabadze began collaborating with the leading Georgian theater director Kote Marjanishivili, for whom he produced set designs for Marjanishvili's theatre in Kutsai. Kakabadze became a professor at the Tbilisi State Academy of the Arts in 1928. A formalist and avant-gardist until the end, Kakabadze never fully adopted the offical art of Socialist Realism espoused by the authorities, and was dismissed from the Academy in 1948.