Click on the Picture to see some Exhibits of Gena Lakoba

 

Gena Lakoba, an Abkhazian Painter And His Themes

 

A couple embracing, melting to a vast and passive statue, standing on a foot. Without heads, they seem to be universal, arms around body, a fairy-like thread dwindled around them.

 

The form and style are sculpture-like, and have obviously been influenced by the cubistic forms of Picasso.

 

Gennady Lakoba, one of the well-known artists in Abkhazia, was trained at the Art School in Sukhum, and later at the Tbilisi Arts Academy. The exhibitions of his works took place in Abkhazia (Sukhum), Russia (St. Petersburg), Belorussia (Grodno), and Germany (Hannover), among others.

 

The two main themes of Lakoba's work are female nude, and nature. His trees seem vast enough to survive any storm. His women, in contrast, are fragile, light and elegant. Lakoba's paintings breath an atmosphere of tranquility and peace. The colors he uses range from monochrome, tones of black and gray, to more exuberant, dominantly red and blue, as in his more monumental works. Nearly all work is figurative, and influenced by the style of Picasso, Le Corbusier and Russian artists like Marc Chagall.

 

In the dolmen series Lakoba has included female nudes, resembling Sataney Gwasha, the eternal mother from the Nartaa epic, with big breasts and huge hips. She is either lying in the dolmens or covering them, being included.

 

All dolmen have round holes in them. And, if there are no holes, there are eggs in them. Call in Freudian.

 

Lakoba experimented very much with Cubism. In time, he got more influenced by surrealism. The women are robot-like with a metal skin and peaky breasts, bearing more resemblance to Madonna in an outfit of Jean Paul Gaultier.

 

The muse of Lakoba, the red-haired curly woman, figures also on a painting in the style of Matisse. There she is, a bowl with goldfishes on her head. She enjoys a drink on a terrace, in front of the town hall. Her body glows in white and red, and she maintains equilibrium by balancing her long small arms. The yellow leaves on the ground have fingers. In the air doves are flying, looking like fish.

 

Behind the appearances in the paintings, you find themes, typical for Caucasian culture: megalyths, myths, divine trees. The mythology of the Nartaa epos is woven through Lakoba's work. A sketch of Le Corbusier's church in Rongchamps falls in egg-shaped heads, bowing towards each other. The organic forms and monumental shapes in the gouaches of Lakoba reflect also his other ability, that of a sculptor.

                                                                                                                                           Charlotte Hille