Merab Abramishvili's Transparent Memory Exhibition Revives Georgian Painter's Medieval-Modern Fusion

ATINATI's Cultural Center presents 'Merab Abramishvili – Transparent Memory,' a major exhibition featuring over 50 works by the Georgian painter (1957–2006). The show, part of a three-venue cycle staged jointly with Baia Gallery, runs through 31 January. Abramishvili developed a distinctive visual language in the 1980s, countering Soviet socialist realism with a humanistic cosmology that dissolves boundaries between myth, memory, and materiality. Central to his practice is the revival of the medieval levkas technique—tempera on gypsum-coated board—creating surfaces that feel both ancient and radiantly present. His paintings feature motifs like paradise scenes with olive and pomegranate trees, leopard images recalling prehistoric art, and ethereal friezes of dancing women. Art historian Baia Tsikoridze notes that Abramishvili's works 'conjure the impression of traversing a realm of living substance' and present 'a completely new model of painting' developed in the late 1990s. The exhibition also includes his Apocalypse cycle and works like Three Hundred Aragvians and Sacrificed, contextualizing garden motifs within confrontations with violence and mortality. Many works were repatriated through international auctions and private collectors, reflecting ATINATI Foundation's mission to locate and return important Georgian cultural pieces. The Center's holdings of Abramishvili's work inspired the formation of its collection spanning Georgian art from early modernism to the present.