The exhibition “Niko Pirosmani – Walker between the worlds” brings together about thirty paintings by the Georgian painter (1862-1918) presenting the real and imaginary panorama, a great calm, a time in transition. The imposing figures of the artist, with powerful graphics, are diverse: a train at night in the countryside, a woman with a beer bock, a monumental wild boar and, sometimes, animals such as a giraffe or a lion, from fantasized territories . Rarely dated, his paintings on oilcloth are largely composed in black and white, animated by the presence of blue or white.
Self-taught, vagabond, walker between city and country, Pirosmani embodies the modern popular vision of the lucid marginal artist. Far from the intermediary symbolic spaces that are galleries, artists’ associations and museums, Pirosmani forged a work imbued with modesty in the taverns and stables of Tbilisi and its surroundings, working to order or offering his art in exchange of food. He moves away from the image of the naive painter walled in his solitude and builds an art that seems to belong to all, like Van Gogh. Combining for the first time the works of these two artists in one place, “Niko Pirosmani – Walker between the worlds” and has an exceptional character. The Georgian painter is indeed presented to the Foundation in comparison with six works by Van Gogh, grouped under the title “Vincent van Gogh: Speed & Aplomb”. Produced between 1884 (the Dutch period) and 1889 (the Provencal period), these paintings also convey a sense of speed and reflect a humble look at the people and things surrounding the Dutch artist. Pirosmani’s influence on the art and vision of his contemporaries is evident. His work is caught in a beam of emulation that then feeds the different avant-garde of the time, Russian and Paris. So attentive to artists whose work, seen as “authentic”, signals a rejection of the conformism of the academy, the Russian avant-garde gives a good presence to Pirosmani during the exhibition “The Target”, held in Moscow in 1913. The engraving of Pablo Picasso Portrait of Niko Pirosmani (1972), presented in the exhibition in Arles, tells about the influence of the Georgian work on the circle of the modern French avant-garde.
The legacy he has passed on to contemporary creation also deserves attention. Punctuated with tributes unfolding on the second floor of the Foundation, the exhibition hosts, among other things, an unpublished work by Tadao Andō: a monolithic monumental table composed of blue roses, a “metaphorical tomb in memory of this artist”, in the words of the Japanese architect. The influence of Pirosmani continues unpublished through artists such as Raphaela Vogel and Christina Forrer. The events of history have kept France away from this artist for many decades. It is high time today to make his creations accessible to the general public.

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