Nugzar Kakhiani was born in Poti, Georgia, in 1952. He studied at the Nikoladze Art College there. He finished the Mukhina Institute in St.Petersburg as a metal artist. He worked also with stone, cornelian and onyx. But his soul gravitated to bright and blustery colour, and so he has became engaged in painting. At first his paintings were quiet, with muted tonal gamma. The colour image was built on the play of hues and halftones. Such a careful elaboration of colour educates the taste, sharpness and delicacy of vision. Gradually, the painter became more experienced, and his paintings acquired assurance and power of maturity, blooming in colourful brilliancy.  The colour of Nougzar’s paintings is deep and multi-layered. It is woven of infinite number of hues and filled with light. At first sight it may be difficult to recognize the shapes in the play of flickering colour dabs.

The figures appear gradually, they draw the first breath just before our eyes, crystallizing from the colour heap. The painter is attracted by major tonality and motives that years ago could be called “the gallant feasts” - repasts, assiduities, music parties, airings. After somewhat daemonic, infernal imagery of early paintings, it has appeared the theme of “Le joie de vivre,” the joy of life.

Born in the ancient Kolkhida, he keeps the blissful pagan feel of entirety and completeness of being. It is embodied almost literally in his favorite personage - auroral gorgeous-bodied beauty of a girl.

He grants these forms even to Olympian inhabitants - Athrodite, Athene, Arthemide, let alone the Bacchants. I remember unwittingly that Niko Pirosmani similarly painted on his impoverished buckrams the luxurious prince repasts and languid, elephantine beauties.
But his style is not bounded by grotesque parody, as well as the irony is not the only aspect of his world outlook. In his landscapes we can catch the ecstatic admiration with Nature. In contradistinction to his favorite impressionists, he never paints from nature and never bears in mind the particular place. It is just a blooming Earth, studied very closely, so that the trees are cut by the edges of the painting, and at the same time it is a bird’s eye view revealing infinite, boundless spaces. Nougzar says that the landscape for him is first of all a colour ensemble. He can just leaf through the illustrated journal, nourishing his eye with colour in various combinations, and so get the impulse to create a ‘physical’ landscape image. Probably, his landscapes are no less fantastical than his figure compositions, but such is his talent, his mission - to make the world more beautiful and gentle than it is in reality. Nougzar Kakhiani is a matured and recognized master, as follows from the long list of his exhibitions and countries where his works reside.

In 1993 he was elected and was awarded the Tsarkovelsky price as artist of the Year in Russia. He won the price together with the famous Russian cellist and musicist Rastropovitsj.

Nugzar visited gallery First Class Art two times already (in 2007 and 2008).

The gallery has published a book including works of Nugzar Kakhiani in 2007.