Click
on the Picture to see some Exhibits of Gena Lakoba
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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. |