Gedenidze Noy Nestorovich; NUDE IN THREE VERSIONS, 1981; Cardboard, oil; 50x40;

Noe Gedenidze is one of the most original artists of the Soviet era. Before the war Gedenidze studied at the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts. During the War he fought and was seriously wounded. In his mature years, in 1962 he graduated from Surikov Moscow State Art Institute. Along with A. Laktionov, he painted portraits of party and government leaders. But his real art life passed in a two-storeyed studio in a silent Olkhovsky Lane, where he painted for his own pleasure, his own way, not expecting to participate in any exhibitions. At that time he created colorful symphonies full of complex symbolism and individual mythology. During Gedenidze’s lifetime the only small exhibition of his works took place in 1987 in Khimki, a Moscow suburb. This is a sketch in which the artist is interpreting his inner appeal towards modernism so unusually for the mainstream of the Soviet art era, and develops the image of a nude.