Finally, the most relevant component of and cultural echo in Danelian's work is the capriccio - a passionate musical form whose harmony is at once atypical and unforgettable. In Soviet reality, the capriccio became Danelian's strategy of artistic self-preservation, forging an equation between Tbilisi-Armenian heritage and Western visual thought that still resonates today."
- Konstantine Bolkvadze, art historian, 2025
Forgotten by official Soviet art history yet pivotal to the cross-currents of 1970s–90s Tbilisi, Gregor Danelian (1950-2021) forged a maverick visual language he called his “capriccio” — a free-form strategy of artistic self-preservation that fused Tbilisi-Armenian heritage with Western modernisms .
Spanning early Pop-inflected collages to late mystical canvases, the works on view reveal an artist in permanent stylistic migration: Expressionism, Cubo-Futurism and Metaphysical still lifes echo de Chirico and Morandi, while grotesque portraits channel the Armenian fresco and Vienna Fantastic Realism. Female sanguine studies, fractured self-images and icon-like lamentations are “embroidered” with the formal rhythms of carpets, binding avant-garde experiment to ancestral craft.
Danelian’s capriccios chart the psychic dissonance of a Soviet citizen who refused ideological conformity. Outsider-art intensity, coded national memory and an almost musical improvisation converge in tableaux that feel both historic and eerily present. In bringing this archive to light, Art Foundation Anagi positions Danelian not as an eccentric footnote but as a crucial lens on the cultural pluralism—and quiet resistance—of late-Soviet Georgia.