Karlo Grigolia, a reformer of Georgian sculpture and significant figure in Georgian art history, has only recently been recognized by Georgian society. Three exhibitions featuring his artistic legacy were organized between 2019 and 2023. Among them, the D. Shevardnadze National Gallery of Georgia held Karlo Grigolia's first retrospective exhibition “Forbidden Art” in March 2023, curated by G. Grigolia, and co-cureted by M. Chikvaidze.

One of the most prominent representatives of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky, said “The more frightening the world becomes…the more art becomes abstract.” In Europe of the 1910-20s, abstract or objectless art served as a “preface” to the First and Second World Wars, while in America of the 1940-50s, it was a post-traumatic condition caused by WWII, which also played a transitional role in postmodernism. In Georgia, abstraction emerged as a post-traumatic response to Stalinist art and as a “prophetic” expression of the country’s independence, against the backdrop of the civil war.

Solomon Gershov was a Jewish artist from the Soviet Union and a representative of nonconformist art. These words themselves imply the inevitable dramatic development of Gershov’s life and creative work. All Jewish artists in the Soviet Union were possessed of a dual identity, and they continually needed to adjust to a different way of life, feeling like aliens in the world of art and not only.