11 year old Kuteiseli genius

[IKho...@abaceeli.org]

Copyright 1997 Associated Newspapers Ltd.

DAILY MAIL

May 22, 1997
SECTION: Pg. 23

LENGTH: 1120 words

HEADLINE: A brush with success

BYLINE: Michael Harvey

BODY:

IT'S an incongruous image - the artist playing catch with a tennis
ball amid refined surroundings at the London gallery hosting his
exhibition.

But at just 11 years old, Beso Kazaishvili can be forgiven a certain
lack of gravitas as he discusses his work.

He's far more interested in talking about the losing performance of
his native Georgia against England at soccer three weeks ago.

Like most boys of his age, Beso is a football fanatic. He also plays
computer games with skill and prefers pizza to eating his greens.

But the little Georgian boy with neatly combed dark hair and a shy
smile has been proclaimed an artistic genius in the making.

'Master Beso', as the budding artist is known, dismisses the idea that
he is extraordinary, however.

'No, I am not special. I am not a painter, I just paint,' he says.

Experts are already comparing him to Picasso and Dali - although he is
scarcely taller than his canvases, which sell for $1,200.

While he has read about Dali and enjoyed his drawings, Beso insists:
'I don't want to copy him. But I think and feel like him.'

A selection of the schoolboy's paintings and line drawings go on
public display at the Roy Miles Gallery in Mayfair tomorrow. Many have
already been sold.

The second of five children, Beso comes from the west Georgian town of
Kutaisi. He began painting at the age of four to compete with his elder
brother.

Once his talents - first noticed by his teachers - came to the
attention of the Georgian ambassador to Britain, Teimuraz Mamatsashvili,
there followed exhibitions in Paris and at the European Bank in the City
of London.

His potential so excited Mr Miles, Britain's main importer of Russian
art, that he agreed to put on the current exhibition for free.

The gallery owner proclaimed: 'There is a distinct possibility that
we've found a genius. His work is amazing. What is more remarkable in a
way is that he is such a normal little boy. You can't help liking him.'

Beso, who saw the suffering of the 1992 civil war in his homeland, is
staying with Mr Mamatsashvili and his wife Irina.

Mrs Mamatsashvili said: 'Beso has had to grow up quickly and he
explains things with his work which he should not know about.'

His themes undoubtedly belie his tender years. Working with Indian
ink, gouache, watercolours and oil, he gives his paintings such titles as
The Eyes, Madonna and Child and The Light of Beauty.

The eye is a recurring motif. Beso says: 'I paint an eye because it
sees everything. When there are wars and people are dying, the big eye
becomes wicked.

'It protects kind people but if they become friends of evil, it
punishes them, too. That big eye is the God.'

Mr Miles hopes to set up a trust fund with some of the proceeds of the
exhibition - which runs until June 6 - so that Beso can attend art school
when he is older.

Daily Mail art critic Robin Simon described Beso's work as showing
'incredible promise'.

He said: 'His skill as a graphic artist is already on a professional
level. He has a sophisticated eye and already instinctively understands
that art is about creating three dimensions out of two.

'In several of his sketches he plays with that idea and gives his
pictures extraordinary depth. It is uncanny in one so young.'

He added: 'I would love to see how he develops his work after a full
academic training.'

GRAPHIC: Y

LOAD-DATE: May 23, 1997

Copyright 1997 Newspaper Publishing PLC
The Independent

May 22, 1997, Thursday
SECTION: FEATURES; Page 10

LENGTH: 989 words

HEADLINE: Just play ball; Eleven-year-old Beso Kazaishvili is about to
have his first UKexhibition, the latest step on the road to fame and
fortune as an artist - at least that's what the minders say.

BYLINE: John Windsor

BODY:
Ever met a child prodigy? For me, it was an incongruously novelettish
experience. There was the 11-year-old painter-genius playing with a ball.
And there was his art dealer, Roy Miles, saying: "He's going to be an
internationally famous artist - even if I have to grab him by the hair."

It is 11.15 in the morning in Roy Miles's gallery in Mayfair. The
scream of an electric drill making hook-holes for prodigy paintings -
pounds 3,000- worth have been sold even before the opening of the one-boy
show - drowns the cork-pop of a bottle of red Georgian wine. The telephone
rings. Another press inquiry. "I'm taking no commission," Mr Miles tells
the caller, "no commission at all."

Eleven-year-old Beso Kazaishvili, from the town of Kutaisi, in
Georgia, is late. "Just when we need the boy, he's not here. It's
outrageous," Mr Miles fumes. When, I wonder, will the role-playing stop?
The only prop missing is a fat cigar for Mr Miles.

Young Beso eventually canters in, all smiles, bouncing his ball,
accompanied by the Georgian Ambassador, His Excellency Teimuraz
Mamatsashvili, and his wife Irina, a jolly couple with whom Beso is
staying. Beso has not seen his parents and two brothers and two sisters
since last month.

There seems to be some misunderstanding about a press statement that
His Excellency has issued. It says that Beso wants to be a neuro-surgeon.
Not exactly what Mr Miles has in mind. "Let's not have any more of these
bits of paper going out," he tells His Excellency, pointedly. Then,
turning to me: "The boy really does want to be an artist. Never mind what
the parents say, poor darlings. They think this neuro-science business is
chic. It dates back to the astronauts. I had a quiet moment with Beso when
I first met him and he told me he wanted to be an artist."

I, too, had a quiet moment with Beso, with Mrs Mamatsashvili acting as
translator. "What do you want to be?" I asked him. "A neuro-surgeon," he
said. Which prompted Mr Miles's clarification about the possible need for
hair-grabbing.

At least the paintings, by "Master Beso" as the glossy gallery
brochure styles him, seem to be unscripted. Semi-abstract, they have a
boldness that is not a child's - bright blocks of colour enclosed within
firm black lines.

Dali is the only artist whose influence he admits: "my favourite", he
calls him. It seemed a cruelty, but I asked him whether he thought he
painted like Dali. "I do not paint like Dali, but I do feel like Dali," he
says. He answers curtly, absorbed in the ink drawing he is doing on a
clipboard.

His Excellency hovers with a camcorder. "They'll show this on
television in Georgia and he'll be three times as famous," he says. "Our
movie star!" says Irina. "What I love about him," says Mr Miles, referring
to Beso, "is his complete naturalness. He has his feet firmly on the
ground. Back home he enjoys boxing."

"What do you like playing at most?" I ask Beso. "Football," he says.
I begin to wonder whether Beso is the only natural person in the room.
There is a stillness about him. He takes my silly questions in his stride.
What does he feel about all the attention he is getting? "I like it," he
says. And would his work be influenced by all the art books that Mr Miles
is threatening to buy him? "I'll be glad of them, but I'll still create in
my own way."

Mr Miles deals in Russian art. The Ambassador introduced him to Beso
last month, when Beso visited London for the opening of his show at the
European Bank, of which His Excellency is governor for Georgia. "I had
heard about Beso when I was in Georgia but had never met him." says Mr
Miles. "When I saw his work at the Bank, I was staggered. The paintings
were just nailed to boards, so I've had them properly stretched and
framed. They're going to walk off the walls. There were two women in here
wanting to buy the lot, but I refused. Let them wait until the opening." A
trust fund is planned and the gallery's exhibition brochure has been
funded by well-wishers.

Mr Miles leads an early viewer, 72-year-old Joseph Fitton, former
chairman of Rochdale College of Art and art adviser to the late LS Lowry,
towards one of Beso's pounds 200 ink drawings. "I'd have this one myself,"
he tells him, "but I'm here to sell for the boy." Mr Fitton buys it, then
looks at a big abstract oil (pounds 1,000).

"Bloody hell," he says, standing back from it, "this guy knows when to
finish. I've always been sceptical about the genius business, but this is
unbelievably good. I've been collecting art since the age of 18 and I've
never seen anything like it."

"My star," says Irina.

"Of course," Mr Fitton continues, "one is always looking for
influences. You could see a bit of Erte here, a bit of Kandinsky, Cocteau,
Braque, something of Dali. But he couldn't possibly . . . I've never seen
images like these."

Beso presents him with the drawing from his clipboard. Irina shows him
how to sign it and write "For Joe". Beso speaks only Georgian, "but seems
to understand every word you say".

An eye motif crops up continually in

his paintings. "He feels that an eye might

be watching him," says Irina. "He feels it
in the skin on the back of his neck."

Had the civil war affected him? He might have seen Russian troops
arriving and leaving, says the Ambassador, and there would have been
bandits, but the hardest thing had been poverty.

"Is your home poor?" I ask Beso. "No," he says, through Irina. "The
situation is changing for the better each day."

As the trio is about to leave for lunch, Mr Miles answers another
telephone call. "Sky Television!" he announces. "That's one million
people. You're not to go yet."

Beso begins pacing up and down, bouncing his ball. "Poor darling,"
says Mr Miles, "he's hungry"n

Master Beso at the Roy Miles Gallery, 29 Bruton Street, London W1,
from tomorrow to 6 June (0171-495 4747)

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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