Farhad Khalilov’s solo exhibition at the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi brought together approximately thirty-five works, tracing several decades of his painting. Presented by the Georgian National Museum from 1 to 22 March 2016, it placed early figurative and landscape subjects alongside the larger, more abstract canvases of his mature practice.
Contemporary accounts identify Portrait of an Old Man (1961) as the earliest work on view. The selection also included In Goradil (1966) and Flowering Almond (1976), together with paintings from Recollection, Unexpected View and Earth Patterns. These juxtapositions allowed the exhibition to follow changes in Khalilov’s pictorial language through specific works rather than through a simple division between representation and abstraction.
Absheron remained a recurring point of reference: its houses, trees, coast and open spaces appeared both as observed motifs and as memories distilled into colour and form. Across the selection, the Caspian landscape gradually yielded to broad fields, compressed horizons and rhythmic structures, while retaining a sense of place. The Tbilisi presentation made this continuity visible within one exhibition, connecting the intimate scale of early observation with the expansiveness and material presence of the later paintings.
