Goudji Amashukeli
Sculpture, gold-work
Biography
Sculptor and goldsmith, was born in 1941 in Bordjomi, Georgia. He spent his youth in Batumi with. He studied sculpture at the Art school of Tbilisi between 1958 and 1962. He left Georgia in 1962 for Moscow, where he started a career as a sculptor, while dreaming of becoming a goldsmith.
In 1969 he married Katherine Barsacq who worked at the French embassy in Moscow. He moved to France in 1974 after five years of personal intervention on his behalf by President Georges Pompidou. Since then he lives and works in France. In Paris he made jewelry and decorative objects for art galleries.
His artwork combines the technique of the dinandery with hard stone incrustations in metal. His first work consisted of brooches and torques. He then went on to create canthares, aquamaniles, rhytons, pyxides and animal figures.
In 1976 he created the academician's sword for Félicien Marceau. He has created 15 other swords for Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Raymond Barre and Maurice Allais.
His works are exhibited in art galleries and museums, in France and abroad. They have been offered by the French Presidents of the Republic, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chiracor Nicolas Sarkozy, to Foreign Presidents.
The majority of the civil pieces are preserved in private collections and museums: Museum of decorative Arts of Paris, Museum Mandet de Riom, Dobrée Museum of Nantes, Museum of decorative Arts of Lyon, Vatican Museums, etc.
In 1985 he created a Baptismal Font and a Pascal candlestick for the Abbey of Epau and the National Committee of Sacred Art, which now resides in the Notre Dame de Paris.
Between 1992 and 1996 he designed twenty-five works for the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Chartres, all registered in the Inventory of Patrimony. In 2008 he created twenty-five new works (sacred vessels, candlesticks, ciboire), which make Chartres's collection one of the most important collection of Goudji liturgical works in France.
He has provided works for several cathedrals, abbeys and churches. In 1999 he produced the reliquary of Padre Pio, a gift of the Minor Brothers Capuchins to the pope John Paul II on the occasion of the beatification of Padre Pio. The Pope carried this on his cape at the opening of the holy door of St Peter's Basilica of Rome. Other works for the Minor Brothers include sacred vessels, the cross of procession, the monstrance, the lantern, the censer and its shuttle with incense, as well as the cover of the "évangéliaire".
In 1986 the French artist Goudji has become chevalier and in 1996 Comandor of the Order of Arts and Literature. In 1998, Goudji receives the title of "Maître d'Art" by the French Minister of Culture.
http://www.goudji.com/textesweb/bio.html
Gallery
