Niko Pirosmani House-Museum (Nikolai Aslanovich Pirosmanashvili) was founded in the village of Mirzaani near Sighnaghi in 1960. The memorial Museum is located in the house of the famous Georgian and Russian primitive artist Niko Pirosmani. In the halls exhibited his original work, a portrait of the artist by Pablo Picasso, Pirosmani photos and his contemporaries. In the Central hall-about 13 paintings Pirosmani average fame. There are two portraits of Queen Tamara, a portrait of Shota Rustaveli, a bear, “Scratches” and something else; presumably from the early period.
The house itself is a brick building on one floor with a terrace and a cellar. In front of the terrace in the ground dug a few qvevri. A few meters away is something like a well. This house Pirosmani built at his own expense somewhere in the 1880s or 1890s. He lived there on those rare occasions when he came to Mirzaani from Tbilisi. The rest of the time his sister must have lived there.
Nico Pirosmani (1862-1918) – the most famous Georgian artist of the XX century. His fate was tragic, he lived and died poor and unknown. Pirosmanashvili was born in the Kakhetian village of Mirzaani, in the family of a poor peasant. Forced from childhood to earn a living, he could not get a special art education. The first pictorial skills were artists-strangers who painted the signboards of shops and eateries. Having moved to Tiflis, Niko was interrupted by small casual earnings, in 1890-1894 worked as the conductor on the railroad. But the service did not attract him, and soon he himself became a homeless wandering artist, whom the owners of the tifli dukhans invited to write signs for them.
Pirosmanashvili painted his paintings on white and black oilcloth, leaving unpainted pieces in some places. His heroes are peasants, artisans, merchants, princes, priests. Surrounding treated Pirosmanashvili as mentally unhealthy person. He even earned such nicknames as” Seven Fridays a week “and”out of this world.” Until the end of his life, the artist most of the time lived in complete poverty, spent the night in the cellars.