Hans Heiner Buhr talks to FilterFree radio show host Ruso Strelkova
Hans Heiner Buhr, an artist, teacher and adventurer arrived in Georgia 14 years ago. Hans’s grandfather was also an adventurer who traveled to France and had a business in Turkey. Perhaps due to strange genetic consequences Hans settled in Georgia, married a Georgian woman and together they created a Georgian-German family.
Here in Tbilisi Hans teaches German to children at the so-called “German School.” At the same time, his son teaches him Georgian by writing words on paper for him, the ones, Hans finds difficult to memorize by sound. Hans is a visual artist, therefore perceives Georgian language visually.
Not long ago, Hans together with his friend and artist Nugzar Natenadze rented a studio in the heart of Tbilisi, with windows facing Matchabeli Street. According to Hans, the place reminds him of his hometown Berlin, especially when it’s gloomy outside. Hans is looking forward to June to make an exhibition in his studio together with few friends and colleagues. One of the most recent paintings the artist is still working on is called Mamluk. Men of war, daggers, horses, Caucasian characters, stories he was a witness of as well as different attributes affiliated with military theme often are the source of his inspiration.
Recently, he read the memoires of Rostom Razmadze (Roustam Raza) a person with an interesting destiny, who was sold as a slave seven times, a bodyguard of Napoleon Bonaparte, who married a French countess and declined to follow the emperor in his exile to Elba. Even though Hans would not admit, still, somehow the horseman on the canvas in his latest work reflects the story of that famous Mamluk. Occasionally some Georgian collectors purchase his artworks, sometimes he collects paintings himself. More often, he exchanges his works with friends. In his studio, a book of works by Kazimir Malevich and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec can be found. At this stage of his artistic explorations the two artists seem to interest him. Hans likes the freedom of flowing lines of Lautrec and the well defined structure in the works of Malevich and seeks to achieve the combination of the two in his works. Hans likes to work with mixed media technique, however sometimes gets tired of mundane artistic explorations and goes to explore nature.
One of his favorite places is the Algeti National park, which is only 60km away from Tbilisi and a wonderful place to escape the city for the weekend. Hans likes to travel and seven years ago he established a small travel agency called “Caucasus Reisen.” First it was meant to show friends the beauties of Georgia but gradually he became a guide to unknown tourists. Being an adventurer himself, Hans tries to come up with innovative tourism and travel possibilities according to season and interests of tourists. Hans believes that Georgia gives enough of room for explorations and discoveries and jokes about the country’s size pointing out it could be as big as France if ironed.
In his tourism “a la carte” one may find wine tourism, or the one related to exploration of Georgian flora. Probably the most innovative tour Hans has offered to his customers and to the Georgian tourism market so far is an art tour. Where people get a chance not only to visit and observe the sites but also paint their immediate impressions on canvas. These could be streets and churches of Old Tbilisi or animals from the Kakheti region. Hans himself made several sketches of a small house he purchased in the region, in the gorge of the Cabali river.
Even though the number of tourists has grown recently and Hans is happy to see more backpackers from Israel, Poland and the Baltic region, there are still very few who come for an art tour.
To promote Georgian art abroad and to spread the word about Georgian culture, Hans founded the “Art Club Caucasus,” an initiative meant to bring foreign artists to Georgia and to stir up the interest into Caucasus as an art region. The August events of 2008 became an obstacle for this project, many of his friends and colleagues are rather cautious about traveling to Georgia. However, Hans would not give up and as mentioned before he is working on an exhibition to be presented in June.
The artworks by Hans Heiner Buhr can be found on http://heinerbuhr.de/ and http://facebook.com/heiner
30.04.2010
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