COVER N. 554 - GEORGIA

Postmark: Georgia Tiblisi 15.01.2025

Posted on the 15th January; Received on the 22nd January 2025

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Georgia. The country which has been on the news quite often lately, because of the huge pro-democracy and pro-Europe demonstrations following political decisions by the government whose legitimacy is also questioned, that were considered to tip the scales down to the side of its imperialist and bellicist neighbour...

Think of it as a confrontation between two of the country's children: Joseph Stalin and Khatia Buniatishvili... I, for one, know who I would vote for...

The Phantom was again on the march through the Caucasus, it seems, for a letter from him, postmarked from Georgia's Capital, Tiblisi,  dropped into my (rather humid, unfortunately) letterbox today. Danke sehr, Alex!

Again stamps open my eyes to the best man can produce. I had never heard of Lado Gudiashvili, I think. But a quick search on the internet yielded images of absolute beauty in a style that, to me, looks like an amalgamation of much of the best the 20th century had to offer on canvas, from Modigliani to Picasso, from Souza-Cardoso to Rivera.

Lado Gudiashvili (1896 - 1980) first studied painting in Georgia but as many an  aspiring painter of the early 20th century fulfilled the dream of going to Paris, where he arrived in 1919 and where he'd stay until 1926 perfecting his art, until his return to Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union.

There, confined within the official straightjacket of Social Realism, he developed a flair for fantasy and myths as a creative escape to the imposed norm.

In 1946, on request by the Catholicos patriarch, he started a set of frescoes  on the inside of a  church in Tiblisi, a commission which would be halted before being completed and which would grant him the expulsion from the Academy of Arts and the Union of Painters, in 1948, under the accusation of being a formalist...freedom of speech and creation at its best….

On 27JAN2020, Georgia Post issued the single 3 Lari stamp souvenir sheet, of which three were used on this cover. The stamp features a photograph of the painter with the legend Georgian Outstanding Figure below his name.

As a curious note, it should be noted that the stamp is labelled as a 2019 issue although it was only officially circulated as of January 2020…