Giorgi Shengelaia’s famous biopic focuses much more on a cinematic representation of Pirosmani’s naïve style as opposed to narrative storytelling.

Nikoloz Pirosmanashvili (1862–1918), better known solely as Pirosmani, is perhaps Georgia’s most famous painter, despite his relative obscurity during his own lifetime. Born to a peasant family, he was raised in Tbilisi where he worked a variety of jobs, including as a servant, a herdsman, and a railroad conductor. Over time, he taught himself to paint, creating various signboards, portraits, and other works that he sold to numerous shopkeepers.

While the Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916, invited Pirosmani to their meetings, the tension between Pirosmani’s self-taught naïve style as compared to the more regulated professional standards was always present.

By 1918, Pirosmani was suffering from extreme poverty — he died that year as a result of malnutrition and liver failure, and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

It was only after his death that Pirosmani began to gain real recognition, both at home and abroad. As a part of this renaissance, Georgian director Giorgi Shengelaia produced Pirosmani (1969), translating some of the artist’s most famous pieces into a cinematic tableaux of Pirosmani’s life, as portrayed by the Soviet Georgian painter Avto Varazi, who also served as the film’s production designer.

Shengelaia does not approach the film as a traditional biopic — instead, the emphasis is on aesthetic principles. The story itself jumps between different periods in Pirosmani’s life, creating a timeline linked together only through Pirosmani’s own paintings that are used as jumping points to tell the story behind each one.

Many of the shots are static, imitating the formal arrangements so characteristic of Pirosmani’s works. Every item on-screen is carefully placed, again replicating the sense of a painting come to life. The soundscape is also sparse: there is little dialogue and no overarching score. Instead, the focus is purely on the visuals and everyday impressions of the world around Pirosmani.

Indeed, this is where the film shines. Shengelaia, aided by Varazi, does an outstanding job of portraying Tbilisi at the cusp of the 20th century, from the costuming to the complex indoor and outdoor sets. Yet at the same time, there is always a sense of illusion about the structures created, again linking back to the ultimate goal of bringing Pirosmani’s work to life via film.

Due to the more abstract storyline, many viewers unfamiliar with the specifics of Pirosmani’s life may find themselves confused. The unclear timeline and lack of context for many stories, as well as who each character is that interacts with Pirosmani, can be bewildering. That being said, the overall message is clear — that Pirosmani is an artist unable to come to terms with the mercenary world, instead ending up a lonely, poverty-stricken old man.

This is not a film that will give you clear answers or portray a set biography. It is, however, a film about beauty, especially the elegance found in the mundane, both as Pirosmani originally portrayed in his paintings and through Shengelaia’s own cinematic eye.

Film details: Pirosmani (1969), directed by Giorgi Shengelaia, will be screened at the London Georgian Film Festival on 3 October 2026. The film is also widely available on YouTube with varying subtitles.