TBC and the Association Culturelle Vera Pagava – AC/VP announced the opening of Silent Cities. This major survey of the Georgian-born French artist Vera Pagava (1907-1988) brought together paintings, watercolors, and drawings from a body of work that centers on Cities and Architecture. Born in 1907 in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia, Pagava moved to Paris in 1923. Initially, she began her career as a figurative painter, exploring a variety of mediums primarily consisting of engravings, drawings, textile design, gouache on paper, watercolors and stained glass. The. The exhibition, titled Silent Cities, looks at works from the 1950s to the 1980s, emphasizing a pivotal period in Pagava’s practice when she began transitioning away from figuration. Yet, even as her pieces became more abstract, she frequently named them with references to actual locations and urban environments.
The exhibition introduced to the public a number of works on loan from AC/VP and other collections, such as the set of paintings, also known as “silent architecture.” Pagava’s distinct abstract painterly style is evident in this body of work, some of which were initially included in exhibitions at Galerie Darial by Thamar Tarassachvili-Taly, a close confidant. Silent Cities also features archival records from Pagava's exhibitions at the same gallery.
Complementing the Architecture theme, the exhibit provided insights into historical documents and photographs detailing Pagava's major site-specific projects. These encompass her expansive fresco for the Vatican Pavilion at the World Expo in Brussels (1958) and an abstract triptych designed for the Telecom building in Dijon (1980). Silent Cities also highlighted Pagava's urban representations and features a selection of books with Pagava’s representations of cities and architecture created in collaboration with poet and publisher Pierre Lecuire. Pagava created woodcuts and dry-point illustrations that harmonized with Lecuire’s poetic compositions.
A publication, designed by Timur Akhmetov and released by Kona Books, accompanied the exhibit. This book features an essay “Point by point” by Nina Akhvlediani and a poem by Pierre Lecuire, which he dedicated to Pagava in 1972. It also contains reproductions of Pagava’s sketches, a handpicked assortment from the AC/VP archives, and a specially commissioned Georgian rendition of "Disquiet", an essay by the Canadian author and poet, Lisa Robertson. Robertson’s compositions frequently explore concepts of philosophy, art, and language, with a distinct focus on architecture and cities. Her poetry and prose alike use architecture–as both space and structure–to navigate between conceptual thoughts and palpable existence.
Curator: Nina Akhvlediani
Associated curators: Elisso Tarassachvili, Anna Tarassachvili for the AC/VP
Exhibition coordinator: Mariam Tsikaridze
Exhibition display concept and design: Nina Akhvlediani
Graphic design: Timur Akhmetov
Typeface design: Timur Akhmetov, Sasha Kulikov
The exhibition was organized in partnership with the Embassy of France in Georgia and the French Institute.
Cover image: Vera Pagava, Ville (1956) © courtesy of Association Culturelle Vera Pagava – AC/VP
Pagava’s works are held in private and public collections including the National Museum of Georgia, the Centre Pompidou - National Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art of Paris, Museum of Fine Arts of Dijon and Unterlinden Museum of Colmar. The majority of her works and archives are held and managed by the Association Culturelle Vera Pagava - AC/VP.
Pagava has been featured in recent monographs and exhibitions, including Elles font l’abstraction, the Centre Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art, Paris (2021) and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2021) and Femmes, années 50: au fil de l'abstraction, peinture et sculpture at Musee Soulages, Rodez (2019).
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