artindex

I am Osamu Sasaki, the writer of this Home Page and guest conductor at the Osaka Symphoniker, to which Mr. Zaza Gogua, Mrs. Nino Karumidze's husband, belongs. I have had opportunities to perform with musicians from the Georgian Republic for a few years, and have been fascinated by their outstanding musical talent and charming personalities. I can feel their strong love toward their family, friends and hometown, and this year I was able to confirm that my feelings were correct when I saw the paintings of Nino Karumidze for the first time. A culture cannot be established overnight. The Georgian Republic, a country adjoining Turkey and facing the Black Sea, had already become independent from the Russian Republic a few years before we generally learned about it. Now, the construction of oil pipelines from Azerbaijan is in progress, and Georgia's President is Mr. Shevardnadze, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, it is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Georgian culture flourished, however, much earlier than that of European civilization, and it was where Western and Eastern cultures met along the Silk Load to weavw a unique culture. With the great success of her one-woman exhibition in Vienna - a city of tradition - this May as a starting point, Nino Karumidze is going to live in Japan and undertake creative activities as a painter. If you are interested in asking her to paint a piece for yourself after reading this article, please let me know.