The George Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Georgian Art and Heritage Preservation with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Protection of Monuments and Tbilisi State Academy of Art realized a project: “An Exhibition of a Unique Collection of Rene Schmerling’s Ex-librises (the 30s 0f the 19th and 20th cc) and a Discussion Round Table about the Issues of Georgian Graphic Art” (October 15-30, 2013). The gathering was dedicated to the jubilee date of the 110th anniversary of well-known graphic artists – Lado Grigolia and Nikoloz Chernishkov.
On October 15, 2013, in the exhibition hall of the George Chubinashvili Centre there was organized an exhibition, where an ex-libris collection of a famous Georgian scientist Rene Schmerling was represented. The collection is kept in the archives of this organization and includes more than two hundred best samples of Georgian, Armenian, Russian and European unique ex-librises from the 19th to the 30s of the 20th century.
Also, the exposition included Lado Grigolia’s several typefaces of fonts, the miniatures and the patterns of easel etchings of N. Chernishkov and the book marks executed by the students of Tbilisi Academy of Art especially for this event (teachers: Loretta Shengelia-Abashidze and Gogi Tsereteli).
In the frames of this gathering a conference was held on October 16. A leading scientist of the George Chubinashvili Centre, Doctor of art history, Prof. Dimitri Tumanishvili spoke about Rene Schmerling as a researcher, her wide interests and the priceless contribution she had made in the history of Georgian culture.
One of the participants of the project, a senior researcher of the same centre, Dr. Marina Medzmariashvili spoke about Nikoloz Chernishkov’s creative work and presented to the society not only his works kept in the collection of Rene Schmerling, but also all the material that she could find so far.
Ms M. Japaridze, the heiress of the national artist of Georgia, the Rustaveli Prize winner Lado Grigolia, spoke about his creative work.
The organizer of the project, a senior researcher of the G. Chubinashvili Centre Dr. Mariam Gachechiladze spoke about the origins and development of ex-libris in general, analyzed Rene Schmerling’s unique collection and the history of development of Georgian ex-libris from the beginning (18th c) to our days.
In the end there was a discussion in which the graphic artists, students and guests took part.
The subject of the discussion was the problems existing in the modern Georgian book graphic: problematic issues of the development of printing, computer and artistic font, ornament and ex-libris. The participants discussed the ways of solving these problems and outlined future plans.