Paata Merabishvili's exhibition "The Colors of Eve"
15.09.2025
From September 25 to November 9, 2025, the Marina Tsvetaeva House-Museum will host a large-scale exhibition of artist, sculptor, and designer Paata Merabishvili titled “The Colors of Eve.” The exhibition will be displayed in the galleries of Apartment No. 1.
Marina Tsvetaeva is one of the greatest Russian poets, a brilliant talent not only in Russian but also in world poetry.
She combined poetic genius with the essence of womanhood; her verses reflect the subtlest movements of the female soul. These poems are open to all, defenseless, confessional, sincere—and perhaps for this very reason endowed with incredible power. Their energy and expressiveness are always at the highest pitch: “to the brim,” “at full height.”
Paata Merabishvili recalls:
“I could not pass by such a marvelous phenomenon. The image of Marina Tsvetaeva, the irresistible charm of her and of all her lyrical heroines, is for me as an artist inseparably tied to my youth, to the beginnings of my life and creative path. In her poetry I discovered Woman—femininity itself.
I wanted to show the audience my vision of Marina: her vitality, temperament, passion, tenderness, sensuality, and the plasticity not only of body but of soul. For this project I chose works that, in one way or another, have been connected with Tsvetaeva’s art throughout different periods of my life.”
The exhibition presents Merabishvili’s works from various years, including sculpture, painting, and graphic art.
Among them is a portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva painted in a Cubist manner, with characteristic geometrization, deliberate asymmetry, and complex compositional structures. Despite the stylistic conventionality, Tsvetaeva remains immediately recognizable. The artist succeeds in conveying the poet’s nature, in which tenderness and femininity coexist with severity, almost an ascetic self-denial in service to the Word.
Following the completion of the painting, it was decided to publish a collection of poems, The Colors of Eve, where selected verses by Tsvetaeva are accompanied by Merabishvili’s own illustrations.
Merabishvili’s canvas “Tsvetaeva” (2024) belongs to a cycle of portraits dedicated to creative figures connected in one way or another with Georgia. Although Marina Tsvetaeva herself never visited Georgia, she translated three poems by the classic Georgian writer Vazha-Pshavela: “Gogotur and Apshina,” “The Wounded Panther,” and “Eteri.” Preserving the folkloric essence of Vazha-Pshavela’s poetics, Tsvetaeva enriched the originals through translation, endowing them with the unique qualities of her own lyric voice.
Marina Tsvetaeva is one of the greatest Russian poets, a brilliant talent not only in Russian but also in world poetry.
She combined poetic genius with the essence of womanhood; her verses reflect the subtlest movements of the female soul. These poems are open to all, defenseless, confessional, sincere—and perhaps for this very reason endowed with incredible power. Their energy and expressiveness are always at the highest pitch: “to the brim,” “at full height.”
Paata Merabishvili recalls:
“I could not pass by such a marvelous phenomenon. The image of Marina Tsvetaeva, the irresistible charm of her and of all her lyrical heroines, is for me as an artist inseparably tied to my youth, to the beginnings of my life and creative path. In her poetry I discovered Woman—femininity itself.
I wanted to show the audience my vision of Marina: her vitality, temperament, passion, tenderness, sensuality, and the plasticity not only of body but of soul. For this project I chose works that, in one way or another, have been connected with Tsvetaeva’s art throughout different periods of my life.”
The exhibition presents Merabishvili’s works from various years, including sculpture, painting, and graphic art.
Among them is a portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva painted in a Cubist manner, with characteristic geometrization, deliberate asymmetry, and complex compositional structures. Despite the stylistic conventionality, Tsvetaeva remains immediately recognizable. The artist succeeds in conveying the poet’s nature, in which tenderness and femininity coexist with severity, almost an ascetic self-denial in service to the Word.
Following the completion of the painting, it was decided to publish a collection of poems, The Colors of Eve, where selected verses by Tsvetaeva are accompanied by Merabishvili’s own illustrations.
Merabishvili’s canvas “Tsvetaeva” (2024) belongs to a cycle of portraits dedicated to creative figures connected in one way or another with Georgia. Although Marina Tsvetaeva herself never visited Georgia, she translated three poems by the classic Georgian writer Vazha-Pshavela: “Gogotur and Apshina,” “The Wounded Panther,” and “Eteri.” Preserving the folkloric essence of Vazha-Pshavela’s poetics, Tsvetaeva enriched the originals through translation, endowing them with the unique qualities of her own lyric voice.