Pirosmani House Museum

Chughureti, where the painter lived

The State Museum of Niko Pirosmanashvili stands in Chugureti, on the street named after the artist, in the quarter where he spent his last years. Pirosmani died in Tiflis in the spring of 1918 in destitution, and the exact place of his grave is unknown.

He painted on black oilcloth for food and a bed, made signboards and wall paintings for taverns, and almost everything that survives did so by chance, out of a life in which pictures were part of the furniture rather than of a collection.

His other museum is in Mirzaani in Kakheti, in the house he built himself in 1898: over nine thousand items, his canvases and Picasso's lithograph portrait of him. In Tbilisi, the best place to see Pirosmani's own work is the National Gallery on Rustaveli.