George Papashvili

Sculpture

Biography

A sculptor and fiction writer was born in 1898, in Kobiankari, Georgia. He died in 1978, in Cambria, California, USA.

George Papashvily immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1920s, and thereafter lived and worked there. He succeeded both as a sculptor and as an author. Both careers came naturally to him. He co-wrote, with his wife Helen, humorous books often based on his life experiences. Their first book, Anything Can Happen, a tale of George's experiences as an immigrant in America (1922), was made into a movie in 1952, and translated into fifteen languages. The book was a best-seller, selling more than 600,000 copies in the U.S. and 1.5 million worldwide. The couple wrote several other books: Yes and No Stories - A Book of Georgian Folk Tales (1946); Dogs and People (1954); Thanks to Noah (1956); Russian Cooking (1969); Home and Home Again (1973).

As a youth, George Papashvily was trained to make ornamental riding crops and was apprenticed to a swordmaker. With no formal training, Papashvily began carving sculpture in his early 40s. He first worked with literal representations, but soon developed a signature style that was a combination of both naive and modern. He carved directly on wood and on stone, sculpting free standing figures and bas relief.

His work is represented in many private collections and public buildings. He executed commissions for the West Oak Lane and Fox Chase Branches of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Baltimore County Public Library, Hanford Public Library, Beverly Hills Public Library, Bucks County Public Library, Allentown Public Library and the Cascades Conference Center, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

He frequently exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art and had solo shows at the Allentown Art Museum, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Lehigh University, Scripps College, and the Woodmere Gallery. The William Penn Memorial Museum showed sixty of his works at a retrospective show in 1971.

He was a member of the Lehigh Valley Art Alliance, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Audubon Artists and the Philadelphia chapter Artists Equity.

The biography is based on the retrospective catalogue George Papashvili: Sculptor (with an introduction by Charles H. Muhlenberg and notes by Helen Papashvili), Pennsylvania: Freedman Gallery 1979.

https://bucksco.michenerartmuseum.org/bucksartists/image/501/

Gallery