Boris Kocheishvili

Beginning in 2000, the artist started working more and more with color. He has said that only after he turned 60 did he become seriously interested into wet paint. Boris Kocheishvili paints with acrylics as if they were watercolors, only sometimes turning to impasto painting oil techniques. In the winter of 2009 the artist once again returned to the technique of reliefs – “painting with plaster”, which reflects his involvement with artistic illusionism. Using only his metal tool and a palette knife oil painting technique, the artist is able to create elegant figures, objects, forms. Painted in a copper or gold tone, his works come out looking like cast figures, at the same time acquiring an unexpectedly light, porous texture.

In the 1990s, the artist moved to relief sculpture, developing an individual approach to the venerable tradition. Using plaster and papier-mâché, he created vivid all white compositions that seen in bright light produce a lively play of dancing shadows. The art critic Valerii Turchin said, “In the reliefs of Boris Kocheishvili, as in his prints, we see the birth of form/shape itself. His works achieve a unique aesthetic level.”

In the 1980s Kocheishvili produced an extensive series of pastels that are distinguished by elegant color and a precision of hard edged line using a “dry fresco” technique.

Boris Kocheishvili began his career as an artist starting back in the 1960s. Over the years Kocheishvili has explored different artistic techniques, experimenting with the potential of various media, attaining great expressiveness, often leading in completely new artistic territory.

In the 1960s, after graduating from Moscow Art College “Memory of the 1905 Revolution”, Boris Kocheishvili worked for several years at the Nivinsky Etching Studio. He showed in a 1963 Moscow exhibition of prints at the Pushkin Museum along with Illarion Golitsyn and Oleg Kudryashov.

At the end of the 1960s Boris Kocheishvili turned to painting with oil. Working on a larger scale, using techniques discovered over years of experimentation with India ink he created refined, almost monochrome works. His oil paintings retain the subtlety and graphic impact of his earlier works.

Boris Petrovich Kocheishvili (Russian: Бори́с Петро́вич Кочейшви́ли; born April 1, 1940) is an artist and poet who lives and works in Moscow, Russia. His works are in the collections of Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum, Museum Ludwig (Germany), various museums and galleries in Russia, private collections of George Costakis (Greece), Cristina Barbano and Alberto Sandretti (Italy), Arina Kovner (Switzerland), Michael Alshibai and Vladimir Semenov (Moscow) and other private collections in Russia and abroad.