Two Red Chairs by Meir Pichhadze

About the Artist:

Meir Pichhadze was born in 1955 in Georgia.
His art skills were first developed when together with his sister started taking lessons with
the sculptor Razu Ramishvili. Together with his family he made aliyah in 1973. In the late
1970s he began forming his unique style of painting, which was influenced by Georgian
painter Nico Pirosmani and the great Russian painters.
In 1983 he began studying at the Kalisher art college in Tel Aviv.
During the late 1980s his work was primarily influenced by post-modern artists such as
David Sela. His works were shown in leading Israeli galleries.
Pichhadze produced paintings, figurative and abstract, with geometric and organic forms,
which are invariably finished in "industrial" technique and color. Pichhadze collates and
quotes conventional symbols and iconography from various cultural systems, assembling
them in a discontinuous manner in order to subvert the possibility of seeing iconicity in
the painting. Following a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Artist's Studio in 1994 Pichhadze
decided to explore his sense of detachment in New York. He began creating very small
paintings after old family photographs from a childhood album he carried with him on
long trips. In 2003 at the Tel Aviv Musem, Pichhadaze exhibited a series of paintings that
he called Art as Autobiography. Throughout the last decade Pichhadze has also been
painting with childish symbols, known as the "children paintings".
He was known for his unusual style, most notably for painting on a black canvas instead of
the traditional white canvas.
In the past few decades he emerged as one the most prominent and leading Israeli
painters in the country.
Pichhadze died in 2010 after a six-month battle with cancer.