‘In 1988, already in my fifties, I was suddenly betrayed by my heart – I had a myocardial infarction. And I got over it. I hastily gathered all the material I had been working on for over two decades. I refreshed everything I had about Nico Pirosmanashvili and passed it to the publishing house Nakaduli. My book Our Nikala was published in 1990. At the time I hadn’t defined the genre of the book: it contained stories, essays, notes, critical articles and an art historian’s thoughts about the great self-taught artist.

‘A long time has elapsed since then and I amassed more material about Pirosmani, dedicated to various aspects of his personality and art. Some of it was published in newspapers and magazines, even as two books. This time I decided to mix the already published with the new, quite extensive material. The old has been updated and refreshed. I debated about the composition of the book, its genre and the title, going through various options. Finally, I decided on the self-evident one: Pirosmani.’ (From the author’s introduction.)

The cover features Zezva Sagliani’s Nico Pirosmanashvili’s Portrait.