Levan Chelidze

Levan Chelidze (b. 1980) is a Georgian painter whose practice engages with portraiture, still life, landscape, particularly of the Racha region, and compositions informed by Biblical subject matter. Central to his method is a sustained commitment to working from life: his sitters pose in person, enabling a mode of observation that privileges both physiognomic specificity and psychological presence.

Chelidze studied at the Iakob Nikoladze Art College in Tbilisi (2004 - 2006) before continuing at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (2006 - 2012). This academic formation underpins a technically assured painterly language, within which careful draftsmanship and tonal control are brought into dialogue with more open, interpretative elements.

The human figure occupies a primary position in his work. His portraits frequently present figures rendered with a high degree of realism, set against backgrounds that resist fixed spatial or narrative definition. These settings, often abstract or indeterminate, function less as descriptive environments than as conceptual fields, shaped by the artist’s imaginative intervention. Within this framework, elements such as dress, or its absence, are similarly subject to reinterpretation, operating beyond strictly referential constraints.

An important aspect of Chelidze’s working process is the conditional resolution of the painted surface. In instances where sittings are curtailed, he considers the portrait complete at that stage, subsequently redirecting his attention to the surrounding ground. This results in works in which areas of finish and non-finish coexist, foregrounding the temporality of the encounter between artist and sitter while preserving a sense of immediacy.

Biblical imagery in Chelidze’s practice is approached not as illustration but as a means of articulating points of convergence between contemporary experience and historically sedimented narratives. These compositions propose a collapse of temporal distance, situating the present in dialogue with the sacred and the mythic.

Chelidze has exhibited widely in both national and international contexts, including presentations in Tbilisi (Georgian National Gallery among others), Prague (Stone Bell House), Zagreb (MSU - Museum of Contemporary Art), Berlin (Galerie Kornfeld), Dubai (Art Dubai), Vienna (viennacontemporary), and Sofia (Sofia Art Fair), among others. His works are held in the collections of the Breus Foundation and Art Collection Telekom.

EDUCATION

Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, Georgia (2006 - 2012)

Iakob Nikoladze Art College, Tbilisi, Georgia (2004 - 2006)

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2024 Group Therapy – Collections in Dialogue, Art Collection Telekom and Prague City Gallery, Stone Bell House, Prague, Czechia

2021 URTIERTObA, Group show, Window Project, Georgia

2019 Story as a Woven Carpet, Group Exhibition curated by Irena Popiashvili, Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, Germany

2018 I Am The Mouth, Works from Art Collection Telekom, Curator Nathalie Hoyos, Radmila Iva Jankovic, Rainald Schumacher, MSU, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

2018 Karlo Kacharava Today, The Georgian National Gallery, Curator Irena Popiashvili

2017 Still Lives, Solo show at Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project Tbilisi, Georgia

2016 Pestles and Flowers, Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window project, Tbilisi, Georgia

2014 Bel Ami, Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project, Tbilisi, Georgia

2012 Solo Exhibition, Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, Georgia