Lot 81: Khashi

Lado Goudiachvili (1896-1980)
Khashi
signed in Georgian 'Lado Goudiachvili' (lower right)
oil on canvas
55¼ x 44½ in. (130 x 113 cm.)

Formerly in the collection of Mikhail Chiaureli until the 1980s.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
The present work is a later version of the 1919 painting, commissioned by the artist's friend, Mikhail Chiaureli in 1960. The earlier work is held in the Georgian State Museum of Art, Tbilisi (see T. Sanikidze's Lado Gudiashvili, Tbilisi, 1979, pl. 8).

The composition depicts five 'Kinto', or colourful characters of nineteenth-century Tiflis, following a drinking-bout in an inn. During the period 1919-1920, Goudiachvili was preoccupied with the lives of these revellers and painted a series of works on this theme including: Kinto drinking-bout with women and Drinking-bout with friends. The melancholic colour-scheme - derived from Georgian frescos - and dynamic subject-matter enchanted Paris following the exhibition of the series in the winter of 1920.