Gudiashvili Memorial Museum

Continuing down Rustaveli Avenue on the same side as the museum, make the first right and continue to 11 Gudiashvili Street where you can visit the Lado Gudiashvili Memorial Museum, located in the artist's former apartment and studio. More than eight rooms are chock-a-block with his paintings and graphic works. Born in Tbilisi in 1896, Gudiashvili started drawing at an early age and had his first one-man show in 1915. Four years later he went to Paris and stayed for six years, associating with Picasso, Modigliani, Leger, and Utrillo as well as Aragon, Breton, and Mayakovsky.

Despite Gudiashvili's awareness of the artistic movements afoot in Paris, his work remained distinctively Georgian with a unique combination of lyri-cism and witty appreciation of the grotesque. More than any other Georgian painter, his work is deeply rooted in the fantastic-an element that comes to the fore whether he is painting a mythological scene, portrait, or animal. He returned to Georgia in 1925 and worked in a wide variety of media, contributing to numerous group and one-man shows at home and abroad until his death on July 20, 1980. He is buried in the Pantheon on Mount Mtatsminda.