Artist who drew on a dark family secret
WITH its lurid symbolism and dreamy psychedelic tones, it is a painting by one of Glasgow School of Art’s more unlikely graduates.
Jacob Dzhugashvili hoped to make his name as simply a painter, yet he could not escape the shadow of his great-grandfather, the Soviet Union’s arch-persecutor of artists – Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin.
Recalling his time in Glasgow this week, Mr Dzhugashvili, 45, now a successful painter whose work is sold by a top London gallery, admitted he had preferred to keep his extraordinary political heritage a secret during his Scottish sojourn, disclosing the truth only to a select few close friends.
He said people reacted ‘differently’ to his family background, adding: ‘Some curious, some with hate, some with great respect. I told it to those I became close with – and only after they guessed my relationship with Stalin. My friends didn’t care about my name, but our friendship. At college I was just Georgian Jacob. By the end of my studies, I was Scottish Georgian Jacob.’
Mr Dzhugashvili arrived in Glasgow in September 1994 with a £6,000 grant from the authorities in his native Georgia and enrolled on the three-year BA course in Fine Art, Drawing and Painting.
He recalled smoking cigarettes outside the school’s Mackintosh building and spoke of his sadness at the two devastating fires which have ravaged the building. He said: ‘I walked through the corridors and studios of the Mack and it was relaxing. It was my alternative to a cigarette break.’
Mr Dzhugashvili lives in Moscow with his wife Nino Lomkatsi and their nine-year-old daughter Olga. His work is sold by Saatchi Art and exhibited around the world.
As General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1953, Stalin repressed all art he considered subversive, frequently organising the murder of the perpetrators. In the late 1950s and 1960s, even members of the Dzhugashvili family were persecuted.
At school, Jacob and his older brother, Vissarion, now a noted filmmaker, were not spared criticism of their great-grandfather. ‘My name meant that I grew up quite early. And it is, of course, interesting that several of us have gone into the world of art.’
He has only warm memories of his time in Scotland, including one unlikely reminder of home,. He said: ‘I remember Irn-Bru – it tasted like the pear lemonade we had in the USSR.’
‘My friends didn’t care about my name’