Georgia: Tbilisi Looks to Pablo Picasso for Positive Post-War PR

For Georgian officials, the exhibit also offers a way to redirect international attention away from the images of last year's five-day war with Russia. "What this means is that finally we have seen a serious exhibition in Georgia," commented Minister of Culture Nikoloz Rurua at the Picasso show's May 30 opening. "We have been waiting for it for a very long time and I think this is a fore-runner for things to come." During the Soviet era, Georgia had the reputation as being a cradle of creative talent - from artists and sculptors to writers and filmmakers.

Aside from Tbilisi, the works, valued at 200,000 euros (about $283,208), will make stops in the Kakhetian village of Signaghi in eastern Georgia and the Black Sea port town of Batumi.

French cultural attaché Joël Bastenaûre said that although there were "concerns" in France about exhibit security, he stressed that he is "confident" that the artworks would remain safe. The Zervos Museum, the works' home base in Vézelay, France, could not be reached for comment.

The exhibit has already negotiated political unrest. The collection arrived in Tbilisi on May 26, the same day some 50,000 protestors gathered in the Georgian capital to demand President Mikheil Saakashvili's resignation, according to Davit Lortkipanidze, director of Tbilisi's Georgian National Museum, which will also be showing the collection.

But Minister of Culture Rurua shrugged off worries that Georgia, grappling with political protests and border tensions with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, poses a special security challenge for the exhibit. "It is insured and all the procedures are followed," he said. "It is just an exhibition as it would have been in any normal European country."

Security concerns, however, were one of the reasons that advertising for the exhibit has been low-key, said the Georgian National Museum's Lortkipanidze.

Rather than a splashy ad campaign, the Georgian National Museum is counting on word of mouth to generate attendance, he said. "I think [the] Picasso [exhibit] will promote itself . . . Georgia is a small country and people will pass [on] information," Lortkipanidze said.

Linocuts - a type of relief print that uses linoleum -- from the 1960s make up the majority of the exhibit, although drawings dating back to the 1930s, and a few examples of Picasso's cubist period are also included in the exhibit. The items come from the private collection of Christian Zervos, one of the first cataloguers of Picasso's work.

French cultural attaché Bastenaûre stated that insurance and transportation costs meant that only "paperworks," rather than paintings, could be sent to Georgia. The French government and French business sponsors picked up more than two-thirds of the exhibit's 150,000-euro (roughly $211,734) cost, he added.

Planning for the exhibit, part of a French-Georgian art exchange, started in 2007, well before the 2008 war with Russia. Last fall, the Zervos Museum hosted a showing of paintings by early 20th century Georgian folk painter Niko Pirosmani from the Georgian National Museum.

A delegation from Yonne, the French administrative district which houses the Zervos Museum, traveled to Georgia twice to approve the three museums chosen to display the works. According to Bastenaûre, security played a vital role in the museums' selection. "These are very, very secure locations and apparently there is no risk," he said. "That is why we chose the three places and nowhere else."

The exhibit runs in Signaghi's newly constructed Art Museum until June 23, before being shown in Tbilisi's Georgian National Museum from June 28 until August 2. It finishes in Batumi's Adjara Art Museum on September 6.