Natalia de Pita

Natali de Pita was born in 1971 in Tbilisi (Tiflis), the capital of what was then the Soviet republic of Georgia.

Natali gravitated towards painting at a very early age. (“The only other thing I ever dreamed of becoming was a confectionary clerk.”) By the time she was 12, her works had already been featured at exhibitions in Georgia, Latvia, and Bulgaria. By the time Natali received her Master’s degree from the Tbilisi State Academy of Fine Arts, her works had already been exhibited in Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, the United States, and Russia.

Natali, who has published her own poetry in the Russian language, always sought inspiration for her work through literature. The Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic Master and Margarita was an early, profound influence on her. At the age of 12, she produced more than 100 drawings and paintings based on scenes from the novel. Some of these works were included in her early international exhibits.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of great upheaval. Georgia gained its independence as the Soviet Union disintegrated, but the country was ripped apart by civil wars, secessionist conflicts, and economic chaos. Almost everyone in Georgia knew someone close who had been killed, injured, or made homeless, including Natali, who lost several friends in the mayhem. “You don’t live through those kinds of upheavals without them leaving a deep imprint on your psyche,” she says.

The upheavals manifested themselves in Natali’s paintings and graphics of the time, which often exuded a sense of dislocation. The violent disorder also prompted her, like many in her native land, to seek opportunities elsewhere. In 1995, with the country still in a chaotic state, the artist was invited to residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. “Paris was like a blood transfusion for me,” Natali says. “It was, first of all, a chance to free myself of the situation at home, but it also provided a complete sensory makeover in every way.”

Natali shuttled between Paris, Georgia, and St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid-1990s. She entered the design school Créapole, where she studied at the interior design faculty for a year, and finally enrolled at the Sorbonne, where she was awarded a Licence en Arts Contemporains et Sciences from Paris I–Sorbonne.

Natali’s favourite author is the Argentinean-born Jorge Luis Borges, whose own early-life multilingual, multicultural upbringing shaped his often dreamworld-like writings. Natali shares Borges’ sense of fantasy and perspective — “the artist, an author as well as a participant, a relationship to the world as one relates to the scenes in a book, as a book is never truly finished,” she says. She was again an Artist in Residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris during 1998–1999. During this period she collaborated closely with the renowned Russian émigré painter Sergei Chepik, best known for his works at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.

In 2001, Natali moved to Switzerland. She has owned her own art gallery, Lepic, in Lausanne, where she has exhibited her own artwork as well as that of other European artists previously unknown to the Swiss public.

In 2007, Natali de Pita was invited to be part of a major construction project: the new Presidential Palace in Georgia. For the next two years she concentrated on the most involved project of her professional life thus far — a sweeping mosaic encapsulating the entirety of Georgia’s complicated and colourful history. Titled A Walk through History, the mosaics were created for the palace’s façade and its courtyard decoration. Natali personally conceptualised the whole thematic idea and designed the mosaics. She produced a series of oil-on-canvas works which were later, in cooperation with Travisanutto Mosaici of Venice, adapted to three large mosaic panels on the grounds of the complex.

In 2010, a Piazza mosaic floor with a total of 106 sq. m., in the form of a medallion, was created for one of the central squares in Batumi. The mosaics depict figurative motifs in the middle, surrounded by decorative ornamental motifs. This particular work is the largest figurative marble mosaic in Europe.

At the same time Natali pursued interior design and decoration. In collaboration with an architect she completed several private residence projects in Georgia. In 2012 she carried out another monumental project on the main square of Batumi, creating two mosaic façade panels in close collaboration with Travisanutto Mosaici. From this moment Natali found a deeper interest in philosophical and esoteric literature — the work of Gurdjieff, C. G. Jung, and Blavatsky in particular. Such interest led to the creation of several projects, one realised with the Georgian artists Oleg Timchenko and Gia Bughadze. It was introduced by GeoAir at the Venice Biennale pavilion, in the Palazzo Zenobio exhibition space, as an out-of-competition participant.

To this day Natali de Pita lives and creates in Tbilisi, Georgia. She takes interest in many affairs, among them oil painting, graphics, interior, and custom-made design.

In 2019, Natali, together with two like-minded women, Irina Koçak from Turkey and Lucie Bardon from France, established the Foundation for the Support and Development of Georgian Mosaics, Applied Arts and Design “Ribirabo”. The primary task of Ribirabo Foundation is to study, restore and preserve the mosaics created in Georgia in the so-called “Soviet era” as well as the promotion of contemporary mosaic art in the country. With the direct participation of the Foundation and with the financial support of various donor organisations, both Georgian and international, large-scale projects have been implemented and continue to be implemented to save Soviet-era mosaics on the territory of Georgia, which are in danger of destruction.
(For more information on the Foundation's activities, please visit the Foundation page)