Meir Pichhadze

Meir Pichhadze was born 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 decade 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.