Albert Dilbaryan, known as Dilbo, emerged from the generation of the 1960s. His pictorial mise-en-scènes, shaped by a melancholic yet romantic worldview, stand apart from both the dominant styles of his contemporaries and the broader post-Stalinist canon. Though he never openly opposed Soviet ideology, Dilbo remained a quiet dissenter within his own “artistic shell.” For him, depicting unrealistic or fantastical imagery became a means for escaping the constraints of a collectivistic society.
Dilbo explored on his Soviet existence through passeism, retrospection, and a distinctly Armenian worldview. His work fused Soviet ontology with an anachronistic epistemology that came together and intertwined.
Albert Dilbaryan. 1974
Albert Dilbaryan embodied two cultures, and became a central figure in Tbilisi internationalism —a space where intercultural dialogue and cross-cultural exchange were fostered; where not only Armenian and Georgian, but also Western and Eastern traditions converged. His artistic universe and originality reflect the modern concept of the “melting pot.” Indeed, in Dilbo’s creative crucible, an alchemical fusion of seemingly incompatible cultural models takes place. In his paintings, the heterogeneous becomes homogeneous, casting Tbilisi as a symbolic monocultural center.
Sergo Parajanov, Albert Dilbaryan. 1988
The layers of intentionality in Dilbo’s art are so intricate that they effectively neutralize the Soviet system. The narrative of Tbilisi that unfolds in his work is epic, dreamlike, Freudian, and imbued with Thanatosian undertones. The city’s agora is entirely populated with historical-cultural, renegade figures, whose social roles and habitus are shaped by the vanity of life and a bon vivant spirit.
A sense of theatrical anachronism pervades Dilbo’s Soviet Tbilisi: the artist deliberately rejects the ideology and artistic methods of socialist realism. His protagonists appear estranged from society, immersed in hedonistic leisure. Whether portrayed in group or parade-like portraits, or as individuals within a microsociety, these figures reveal a parallel dimension of Soviet fine art—one that deserves recognition and representation.
Albert Dilbaryan was born in Tbilisi in 1928. He graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1952, where he had studied under Ucha Japaridze and Korneli Sanadze. He primarily worked on scenes of everyday life, still lifes, landscapes, and portraits. Between the 1950s and his death in 1991, his works were exhibited both in Georgia and internationally, including in Lithuania, Poland, Italy, Ukraine, and Germany. In 1967, he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Georgia. His works were first shown in Paris in 1963, and are now preserved in museums around the world, among them the Zimmerli Art Museum (New Jersey, USA), the National Gallery and Museum of Art (Tbilisi), the Museum of Modern Art (Yerevan), and the Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow). During the Soviet era, he was an active participant in All-Union exhibitions.
Two defining aspects shape Dilbo’s biography: his solitude within the 1960s generation, and the Tbilisi School of Painting as an intercultural artistic movement. To understand Dilbo’s marginal status among his contemporaries, it is essential to consider the artistic aspirations of the new wave in Georgian post-Stalinist art. The artists of the 1960s sought primarily to modernize Soviet art by introducing avant-garde and French modernist styles, fusing them with Georgian cultural traditions, reviving national cultural identity, and rejecting the canon of socialist realism. Among the representatives of this generation were Edmond Kalandadze, Levan Tsutskiridze, Shura Bandzeladze, Piko Nizharadze, Khita Kutateladze, and Gibson Khundadze.
Albert Dilbaryan. Lovers in the Yard. Oil on canvas. 70 x 56 cm 1970. ATINATI Private Collection
In Dilbo’s work, we do not find the kind of artistic rebellion or imitation of Western schools that marked many of his contemporaries. Unlike them, he did not pursue a revolution in color—that is, the French expressionist palette—nor did he seek abstraction or art without subject matter. Instead, what emerges most strongly in Dilbo’s work is a different line than that of the Tbilisi School of Painting, whose representatives included Albert Dilbaryan himelf, Avto Varazi, Lev Bayakhchev, and Temo Japaridze. This school was stylistically characterized by a monochromatic palette, the theme of the individual’s alienation from society (particularly in portraits), lyrical reflections of the past, romanticism, passeism, and a sense of bygone decades depicted through everyday objects—elements that also found expression in still lifes and collages. Taken together, these features constitute the artistic integrity of Albert Dilbaryan.
If any parallels can be drawn between Dilbo and local and international painting, it would be with the following artists: Chaim Soutine, Giorgio Morandi, Cézanne, Picasso, Mario Sironi (Novecento), Niko Pirosmani, and Alexander Bazbeuk Melikov. These artistic “correlates” do not suggest strict parallels; rather, they represent an attempt to reconsider Dilbo within a broader context, through specific stylistic affinities and a shared spirit. Their common feature is a kind of complex and banal dialogue between the old and the new, between innovation and craftsmanship, and of the artistic ego of mastery. These painters extended their reach into contemporary art in order to avoid the profanation of the “immortal” and the “eternal;” they preferred sincerity towards painting itself rather than towards fleeting stylistic trends. Dilbo followed a similar path: he avoided superficial Westernization, yet created an authentic “Tbilisi modernism” that was Western in itself.
Dilbo’s pictorial and graphic works are dominated by everyday scenes, portraits, still lifes, and urban landscapes. Each genre is harmoniously structured around the archetype of Thanatos, while both his visual narrative and choice of materials reveal the cycle of Thanatos’ triumph over Eros. His muted tones, monochromatic palette, and the subtle placement of specific, intense colors at low frequency recall the opuses of the great masters—Velázquez, Rembrandt, Caravaggio—who, through the dramaturgy of light, conveyed ontological absurdity, vanity, and the ethereality of place.
Portraits
It is difficult to typify the people depicted in Albert Dilbarian's portraits with cinematic, photographic, or pictorial imagery. They are perceived as sculptural or relief-like—rounded and spatial. Each figure, through their gaze and stillness, engages in a sterile form of communication with the viewer. Every subject is precious to the artist, which is why he shares them with us so sparingly and laconically. In this genre, Dilbo becomes a voyeur—exercising marionette-like control over people for the purpose of a “plain pictorial theater.” The artist does not exhibit empathy towards his subjects; rather, he seeks to underline their virtues and flaws, their character and disposition. As a portraitist, he perceives human beauty through the lens of stoicism—an aesthetic of “unbrokenness.” The suggestion that these portraits are contemporary to the artist, rather than anachronistic, is underscored by the restrained chamber-like backgrounds and the highlighted ornaments of their clothing.
Albert Dilbaryan. Harlequin. Oil, canvas. 60,2x48,2cm. 1974
Still lifes
Dilbo’s still lifes are characterized by a terracotta tonality, a monochromatic structure, and a striking perception of volume. In his work, the etymology of still life—that is, the notion of natura morta or dead nature— is transformed into a painterly meditation and rendered with a visual presence. The objects he depicts appear strangely rounded and volumetric; more qualitative than merely existential, and are marked by Cézanne-like non-parallelism and deliberate austerity. Through these nuances, the artist’s psyche can be partially decoded. The fruit, sewing machine, woman’s hat, flowers, hand organ, coal iron, samovar, vase, and dishes that populate his compositions are rendered with a texture that feels at once dry and raw, imbued with a kind of “sophistic” density. In Dilbo’s vision, inanimate objects are never autonomous; rather, they are bound to ideas of human value and to the spirit of their epoch.
His still lifes thus function as an extension of his portraiture, suggesting that the material body of the object cannot exist as self-sufficient in the absence of the human. The order of objects in Dilbo’s still lifes is lyrical and at the same time rational. Yet, more than the arrangement itself, it is the artist’s world of ideas that animates the still life genre. The artist also introduces the sense of lost time, in which, while painting a particular object, he becomes closer to its owners, recalling time lost and found when spent with them. In his vision, objects and their owners appear as fragments dispersed across time, only to be reassembled and bound together by the painter’s hand.
Albert Dilbaryan. The Soup-Bowl and Flowers. Oil on canvas, 42x52cm. 1985. ATINATI Private Collection
Albert Dilbaryan. Still-Life with Fish and Red Eggs. Oil on canvas. 63,5 x 73 cm. 1968. ATINATI Private Collection
Albert Dilbaryan. Still-Life. Oil, canvas. 60,2x65,6 cm
Albert Dilbaryan. Still-Life with a Jug and a Tea-Pot. Gouache on cardboard. 28,5x19cm. 1985
Unlike traditional still lifes that proclaim themselves through scent, taste, material richness, social status, or texture, Dilbo’s works construct their narrative around the erosion and decay that time imposes upon all beings and things. This Gothic poetry and entropy is Dilbo's love for life. Each object emerges as more than a material form: it becomes a bearer of cultural memory, a vessel of the Armenian worldview. In this sense, the depicted objects are more related to the threads of memory, the genetic code, eternity, and the silent ruins of history than to contemporary existence.
Everyday scenes and urban landscapes
Socialist, realist, and academic pictorial paradigms are notably absent from Dilbo’s work, even in genres where their influence were traditionally found. In his urban landscapes of old Tbilisi districts, one can feel the presence of tribal and ritualistic processions. The city itself—through its architectural appearance—emerges simultaneously as an agora and a Parnassus. Within this setting, frivolous figures, ethnically diverse castes, prostitutes, and alienated individuals appear as pilgrims moving toward a kind of Tiflis Mecca. For them, the polis is experienced as a shared, temple-like space—communal yet apolitical. As in his still lifes and portraits, these compositions are pervaded by poetics of temporality: the romantic elegy of aging, erosion, and the inexorable passing of the past. The main gate, the balcony carvings, the ornamental facades, the garments, and the communion altars together generate an epic charge reminiscent of Pirosmani—a narrative dispersed expansively across time and space.
Albert Dilbaryan. Holiday. Oil on canvas. 90,7x75 cm. 1968. ATINATI Private Collection
Albert Dilbaryan. The House with the Red Roof. Oil, canvas. 60x62x. 1979
In Dilbo’s work, urban landscapes and everyday scenes frequently alternate, or else merge within a single composition that unites multiple genres. A sense of time envelops Tbilisi and its inhabitants, as reality dissolves into a vast monochromatic haze. Pictorial illumination often evokes the atmosphere of a surreal scene, a utopia, or a “lost paradise.” The lighting is distinctly theatrical: everything else exists in extreme conventionality.
P.S.
Dilbo did not like speaking about himself, avoiding both self-promotion and the easy language of artistic cliché. His creative genius, encompassing both simplicity and complexity, was all-embracing. Free of arrogance or artistic épatage, he constructed what might be called a “biography of the soul.” A true neoconservative, he was cautious towards novelty, yet tolerant of tradition. Through a traditionalist prism, he refracted and reshaped innovation, striving for a reconciliation and synthesis of the old and the new. Within this process, Soviet reality quietly dissolved.
Yet an exception emerges in one striking self-portrait, in which the artist, adopting the persona of a clown, confronts the Soviet order with open irony and critique. This image stands in contrast to the Soviet tradition of self-portraiture, where individualism was suppressed and every self-image was expected to reflect the archetype of the model citizen—Homo Sovieticus—or to mirror the figure of the leader.
Albert Dilbaryan. 1984
Within this repressive context, the acme—or epilogue—of Dilbo’s creative work emerges in his self-portrait, where the artist aligns himself with the figure of a clown. With a sorrowful expression, he traverses the pictorial plane, and only in this way does he pursue a creative and personal selfhood—lashing out at the ego, the Soviet order, and even biography itself. In doing so, he attempts to achieve a victory over life, through irony.
Dilbo adopted this clown persona in two self-portraits—one with his mother and another with his wife and child. This self-portraiture resonates with the pictorial paradigms of Kakabadze, Kikodze, and Akhvlediani in their respective quests for selfhood. The work thus stands as a pioneering instance within the Soviet portrait genre, condensing self-reflection and political subtext into a single epochal allegory.
