(b Kutaisi, 29 May 1876; d Tbilisi, 10 March 1951). Georgian sculptor. He was born into a family of artists: his father was a wood-carver, his brother Vasily a painter. From 1895 he studied at the Odessa school of drawing and first tried his hand at sculpture in 1896. The sculptor Georgy Gabashvili gave him encouragement, and shortly afterwards Nikoladze went to Paris, where he studied under Antonin Merci?, among others. In 1904 he was again in Paris where he switched from working in plaster to sculpting in stone and marble under the guidance of Emile-Antoine Bourdelle and Charles Despiau. The bronze Unemployed (1906; Sydney, priv. col.) was influenced by Rodin's Burghers of Calais (1895; Calais, outside H?tel de Ville). Nikoladze returned to Tbilisi a staunch supporter of Neo-classicism. Widespread recognition came as a result of his bronze monument to the poet I. Chavchavadze, Grieving Motherland (1910-12; Tbilisi, Mtatsminda Hill, pantheon of Georgian public figures), which portrays the figure of a woman under an ancient portal. The work is impressionistically vibrant yet precise and solid. Following this success, he was commissioned to represent numerous Georgian personages, past and present, including A. Tsereteli (1915; installed 1922, Tbilisi, Z. Paliashvili State Opera and Ballet Theatre Square), in which he developed Bourdelle's ideas. Nikoladze was granted a state studio and gradually became an official state chronicler, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, as did Matvey Manizer and Zair Azgur. In the early 1920s Nikoladze worked on grandiose group monuments such as To the Heroes of the Paris Commune (plaster, 1922; untraced). His later works bear the stamp of academic Socialist Realism.
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