Pirosmani House

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope, that you are all doing just fine!

In this article I want to tell you about this famous Georgian painter called Pirosnami in short and everyone knows about him and his paintings are just really amazing considering all those things, that he had been through and from what things he used to paint his paintings.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t really have much of a connection to Pirosmani paintings, I mean, I had just seen them on papers in my school books or in some other books, however, I hadn’t ever seen the paintings in live until just recently, when I went to the exhibition in TBC art gallery in Tbilisi, where there were recently reconstructed paintings of Pirosmani and other paintings, too.

You know, there are some theories about Pirosmani and no one really knows many things about him, so that we only have those paintings and some writings about him, which make us believe, that he lived pretty poorly and that he was a pretty strange man, if you ask me.

There are majority of the Pirosmani paintings lost or kind of destroyed. It’s considered, that the grave of the painter is not known, either, so that we don’t have anything about him, which will make us see, how he looked or what he looked like. There’s only this one place, where you can say, that the painter’s place was. There’s a house nearby the railway station in Tbilisi, which is now called Pirosmani street and that’s where there was this street, called Malaknebi and it was Malaknebi street no. 29, where he used to live, as they say. Nowadays, there’s a house there and people have made it as Pirosmani museum, which consists of a place under the stairs and there’s an exhibition hall, too.

There’s almost no place in Tbilisi, which reminds us of Pirosmani or his name or his life or his artwork. There’s no Ortachala garden and “Eldorado” or Madatovi island and “Tetri Pelikani”. There are no those inns or places, where there were Pirosmani paintings hanging on the walls or in the entrance. However, there’s this one place in Tbilisi, where Pirosmani spent his last years and days of his life.

The street was not named after Pirosmani while he was still alive. It had another name and it was just like that until 1938, when people were reminded of Pirosmani’s death and that year it was 20 years since he had died. There was an evening for Pirosmani in Metekhi museum and that Malaknebi street was renamed after Pirosmani and it is called Pirosmani street after that event. However, the museum for Pirosmani in that no. 29 house was only opened in 1982. Well, you can’t even call this place a museum, because it’s a really small place and there are not many things to place there. However, that’s where Pirosmani lived and the idea of this museum is to show other people, how he lived there and how his life was besides painting. There are some things, which were brought there from Mirzaani, which is a place, where he was born and raised.

To be honest, there’s no place in this Pirosmani museum for the paintings to be exhibited there, because there’s no security or signalization in the building for the paintings not to be stolen or something like that.

About Niko Pirosmani

Niko Pirosmani is a kind of a nickname for this man called Nikoloz Pirosmanashvili. He was born in 1862 in the village Mirzaani and died in 1918 in Tbilisi _ the capital of Georgia. He was a painter and only after his death was he admired as a painter, I must say.

Well, there are not much things known about Niko Pirosmani, however, we know, that he was born in poor family in Mirzaani and then they moved to Shulaveri. After his parents died, he moved to Tbilisi, where he used to paint, however, he usually had orders for signs on inns or markets or places like that. He used to work as a conductor for railway in 1890-1894, then he went into selling, however he mostly painted still.

Mirzaani is a village in Kakheti, the eastern part of Georgia, where there is Pirosmani museum and it’s in the house, where he was born. This museum in Tbilisi on Pirosmani street is a part of this Mirzaani museum of Pirosmani and there are some things exhibited there taken from Mirzaani museum, if you want to know the truth. There’s this yearly holiday in October for Pirosmani and there are always many national folk ensembles gathered in Mirzaani Pirosmani museum on that day.

To be honest, there are not many people visiting this Pirosmani museum in Tbilisi, because many people don’t really know, that such place exists. They probably know, that there’s a museum for Pirosmani in his birthplace in Mirzaani, however, it’s not that close to Tbilisi and people don’t really go there that often. Usually tourists know more about Pirosmani house in Tbilisi, than the local residents there and people in Tbilisi get to know about this Pirosmani house from them, actually. The tourists are usually really surprised to see this Pirosmani museum in such condition and they have lots of questions about why it is not renovated or in a good condition. It’s really frustrating to see the greatest Georgian painter’s museum in such bad condition and that’s why tourists are surprised to see it that way.

How to get there

Well, getting to the Pirosmani house is not a big of a deal, however, I don’t really like getting there, because you have to walk for too long or you have to wait for the transportation to get there for a pretty long time if you miss one bus. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about the Pirosmani house until just recently when I was going to the Carrefour in Karvasla shopping center, which is just nearby, so that when I missed a bus and walked to the Karvasla shopping center from the Station square metro station, I just saw this sign on the wall, saying, that there was a Pirosmani house there. To be honest, I did really want to get inside and see what was inside, however, I was in a hurry and I decided to pay a visit there the next time.

So that, if you want to get to Pirosmani house in Tbilisi, you can get there by metro, which I find really fast way to move around the city, however, it’s kind of far from the metro station to get to the Pirosmani house there. Anyways, you can take the metro and get off on the Station square metro station and then you have to get to the side of Tsotne Dadiani street. You know, if you are going to the station square metro station from Delisi or Technical university metro station or whatever, I mean, if you are on the Saburtalo Line, and if you get off the train on the station square metro station, which is the last stop for that line, you have to take the stairs and then get to the other side and then walk straight and get on the escalators, which will take you to the Tsotne Dadiani street. Then you have to wait for a bus to get to the bus station, so that you can take the bus to the Pirosmani house. Well, to be honest, it needs just one stop to get nearby there, so that you can just walk to the pirosmani house that way and not wait for the bus to come, because usually those buses move pretty slowly and I usually have to wait for a long time for them to get to that bus stop.

So that, you can just get off the station square metro station on Tsotne Dadiani street and then walk a little bit, until you see the sign of Pirosmani House. However, I must tell you, that there are no paintings exhibited there and you will only see the table and bed and stuff like that in that small room under the stairs, where Niko Pirosmani used to live and paint.

Well, to tell you the truth, the local residents don’t really know about this place in Tbilisi, where there is this Pirosmani house. I guess, they only know, that there is the Pirosmani museum in Mirzaani, in Kakheti, however, many people don’t go there either, because there’s not very fancy museum there, either. And, besides, it takes pretty much time to go there from Tbilisi, because you weill need somewhere about two hours to get to the Pirosmani museum in Mirzaani, I guess. to tell you the truth, there’s not any paintings of Pirosmani exhibited in Mirzaani museum, either, so that people don’t really want to get there just to see the house, where Pirosmani was born, I guess.

It’s a known fact, that the local residents of Tbilisi get to know about the Pirosmani house nearby the station square metro station from the tourists from other countries. And those tourists are pretty surprised, that the local people don’t really know much about Pirosmani and the museums and the paintings, either. They get really surprised, when they visit the Pirosmani house and the real facts don’t really meet up their expectations. The pirosmani house in Tbilisi is in a pretty bad shape and no one from the government really cares about that and tourists usually ask, that if this Pirosmani was a great painter of Georgia, then why is his museum so abandoned and not cared.

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