David Kakabadze (1889-1952) was a leading Georgian avant-garde painter, graphic artist, scenic designer and amateur photographer. His work joins modern European art with Georgian national traditions, and his interest in cinema made him an innovator in that field.
Born into a poor peasant family, he studied natural sciences at St. Petersburg University with the help of local patrons, graduating in 1916, and attended painting classes in the studio of Lev Dmitriev-Kavkazski. After a brief period teaching in Tbilisi, he moved to Paris, where he lived from 1919 to 1927 and took part in exhibitions with fellow Georgian artists.
His painting moved from fauvism to cubism and abstraction. Early on he painted landscapes of his native Imereti; in Paris he turned to subjectless painting, experimenting with metal and glass in place of paint. In 1923 he built a film camera that created an illusion of relief, making him one of the pioneers of three-dimensional cinema. Back in Georgia from 1927, he returned to landscapes, now including industrial scenes, and decorated buildings such as the Tbilisi opera and ballet theatre.
His legacy lies in fusing the avant-garde with Georgian tradition. He taught at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, but Soviet pressure over his formalism led to his dismissal in 1948.