About the work

A cult figure in Germany and throughout the Caucasus, Karlo Kacharava (b. 1964, Samtredia – d. 1994, Tbilisi) was a fixture of Georgian artistic and intellectual circles before his untimely death from a sudden brain aneurysm at the age of thirty. From 1981 to 1986, he studied art history at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, afterwards joining the Chubinashvili Institute of the History of Georgian Art as a researcher. Alongside and between his visual art and activities with Tbilisi’s Tenth Floor Group, he produced numerous works of poetry and critical theory. In 1990, he left the USSR for the first time, relocating briefly to Cologne. House in the Woods, is indicative of his early geometric style and dense mark- making.

Date and country of birth

1964-1994, GE

Career Highlights

During his lifetime, Kacharava participated in up to 40 exhibitions. In 1997, he was posthumously awarded the Giorgi Chubinashvili State Prize for his contribution to Georgian art history. In 2017, a major retrospective was organised by Irena Popiashvili at the Georgian National Museum. Kacharava’s works are held in collections including the George Economou Collection, Athens; the Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi; He Art Museum, Shunde; Kolodzei Art Foundation, Highland Park; MARe/ Muzeul de Arta Recenta, Bucharest; and The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas.Sentimental Traveller at S.M.A.K., Ghent is the first museum exhibition of Kacharava outside of Georgia.