Klara Kvees

1903-90 / painter

Klara was born in Tbilisi to an ethnic Latvian family. In 1921 she entered the Tbilisi Art Academy, from which she was later expelled for her "infatuation with modernist art". In addition to painting and graphic art, she also did theatre set design and worked for the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. She took part in some 45 archaeological expeditions. Her archaeological sketches, schemas and reconstructions often appeared in archaeological reports, scientific studies and monographs without credit being given to her.

Her work contains marks of classicism and her mastery of painting and composition were unparalleled. But this did not keep her from working in nearly all directions of modernism of that time.

Her first personal exhibition was held in 1967.