9
Jan
Obituary: Gulnara Tsiklauri
An outstanding Georgian surrealist artist Gulnara Tsiklauri, 65, died at the beginning of January. A few days later she was discovered by friends and paramedics in her New York apartment.
Born in one of the oldest cities in the world, Kutaisi (Georgia), Gulnara Tsiklauri who held a master's degree in mathematics from Tbilisi State University, worked as a director of Kutaisi Public Library for over two dozen of years when she first visited the United States of America.
On 15 August 2001, she arrived in Boston, MA, to attend an international conference of librarians and university representatives. Her return flight was on 11 September from New York City. Before the departure, Gulnara had some extra time left and she decided to have a walk on Time Square when the tragic events of the day had shaken the entire civilisation. Obviously, her flight was cancelled and in few days she made a lifechanging decision to stay in America.
As she had to start everything from the very beginning, the librarian dared to follow her longtime dream of becoming a professional artist, counting on the knowledge she gained from private lessons in Germany and Spain, and inborn talent and artistic style. The daring Georgian followed her American dream and the success came in her life as a result of hard work.
Gulnara Tsiklauri had numerous exhibitions in the United States as well as other countries, and her paintings ended up in private collections of Georgia, Russia, Israel, France, Canada, and the USA. The photocopy of her first major work after she settled down in America, called “9/11-2001”, is part of the permanent collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
"I was born in Georgia, one of the most gorgeous and oldest countries in the world", – that is all the proud Georgian who held dual citizenship of Georgia and the United States, wished to tell the world about herself. The rest was expressed through her artwork. Although the artist used to write a brief description of some of her paintings on her Facebook page, she would rather listen to others and have their feedback.
The paintings of Gulnara Tsiklauri are the gateway to her individual understanding of the world, which is based on personal experience, opinion, and passion of the creator. She embraced the endless range of topics from eternal philosophical issues to temporary global problems. Still, the gallery of her artwork seems to be deeply autobiographical. ”I think that every man and woman hide his or her face under a mask. In this painting half of the young man’s face is smiling ironically, but the second half is hidden... He hides his pain, fear, helplessness" – this is the philosophy behind her painting called "The mask" (24'x24', acrylic on canvas), which hints at a possible allusion to the disguised author herself.
"New page of history" (40'x30', oil on canvas) increases the viewer's certainty that the artist veils her personality with stories on the canvas but hopes to be seen and properly interpreted. Ms Tsiklauri offers "a kneeling skeleton under a white tablecloth, with a hat on it as a symbol of culture and intelligence. This painting is about our unfulfilled dreams, unused possibilities, wasted talents. I have many intelligent, capable, honest friends who could not find their place in life. Isn’t it a tragedy? On my personal exhibitions people of various nationalities, from various countries approach me and say that this painting is about them..." Clearly, this piece of art is deeply realistic behind the surrealistic veil.
"A pawn becomes the queen" (36'x36', acrylic on canvas) shows a wolf crowning himself after he had walked over the others. "I wanted to show the demonic, predatory joy of a creature, which is ready to commit everything – even murders – on the way to his or her goal", explained Ms Tsiklauri. Obviously, the artist did not appreciate a victory by any means. If it meant to lose one's human face and turn into a wolf, she disdained the successful outcome.
Motivated by the high moral standards, the Georgian artist could never tolerate a betrayal either. At the same time, she favoured the Christian forgiveness. A canvas called "Judas, you are forgiven" has a caption by its author: "People never lose interest in the story of Judas' betrayal of Christ. We speak of Jesus and involuntarily remember Judas. Betrayal is impossible without the betrayed, so, Jesus and Judas are still together. In this painting, I condemn Judas as a traitor but try to understand and forgive him as a person". Here again, Gulnara Tsiklauri seems to give out some personal details about her pretty secretive life story. Her biblical forgiveness of the world's greatest traitor, Judas Iscariot – whose face resembles surprisingly familiar, west Georgian features, contrasting from the faces of other Apostles – is rather biographically emotional. Well, she asked for feedback and here it is.
It is never easy to forget after forgiving someone. Therefore, it only seems natural to sprint through the pain on the other side of the globe. For Ms Tsiklauri "it is not a usual dog – it looks like a human being – independent, willful; it runs forward to its goal; it knows, what it wants". "A green dog" (40'x40', acrylic on canvas) pretty much could be associated with the painter herself whose independent and willful character had spread the wings across the Atlantic after a home run. No one will ever be able to get to know the details of all dog days a single artist spent flying solo.
Another emerald painting, called "A green horse", gives a similar impression, especially, to those who are familiar with the famous Georgian poem "Merani" by Nikoloz (Tato) Baratashvili. Like a kindred spirit of the young poet who struggled for the right to write while been forced to work as a clerk in the middle of nowhere – far away from his friends, family, and homeland – Ms Tsiklauri followed her aspiration across the ocean and used her undoubtful talent to saddle the steed of art.
Whether green is a colour of inexperience, fresh start, or hope in the Tsiklauri art concept, the horse of artistic freedom is certainly white, although muddy white, which clearly makes sense as the road towards personal freedom could not be all neat and clean.
A true artist can never stay locked within a circle of personal problems and thus, frequently represents some political matters through individual periscope. On "The real power" (48'x48', acrylic on canvas) there is a wolf pack "ready to devour anyone who may attempt to take their power away. One of the wolves is grabbing the globe and a pack of money in his paws". Gulnara Tsiklauri compared these wild animals to the political predators who rise to power in many modern countries as "we help them with our votes".
But with the only illusion of democracy, the people's votes never matter as they are not allowed to choose their own rulers. When painting her another politicised canvas "Democracy" (60'x36', acrylic on canvas), Ms Tsiklauri made a brief but clear statement in just a few words: "Any dictatorship in any country can be portrayed this way".
An intelligent, hardworking, selflessly kind and dedicated person like Gulnara Tsiklauri who passionately loved art, homeland and the new country that allowed her dream come true, certainly is a decent heir of the Founding Fathers whom she equally respected and represented through her artwork.
