The ALBERTINA Museum is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to the works of Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918). Alongside the French customs officer Henri Rousseau, Pirosmani numbers among the most important representatives of Naïve Painting, which led that departure into modernism that so revolutionized art from Paris to Munich at the beginning of the 20th century.

For the Russian avant-garde with its Neo-Primitivist beginnings, Pirosmani was a fixed star right from the start who paved the way for artists such as Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov in their quest for the primeval, simple, and deeply felt.

Pirosmani‘s art should always be approached with an unprejudiced intellect and an open mind. His art is a free language, a spontaneous adaptation of his nature formed by instinct.

(Ciprian Adrian Barsan)