Goudji

Goudji is a French sculptor and goldsmith, who was born in Georgia on July 6, 1941.

Goudji was born in Soviet Georgia and spent his youth in Batumi with his family. His father was a doctor and his mother was a Professor of natural science. He had an elder brother, by two years. He studied sculpture at the Art school of Tbilissi between 1958 and 1962. He left Georgia in 1962 for Moscow, where he started a career of sculptor, while dreaming of becoming a goldsmith.

In 1969 he married Katherine Barsacq who worked at the French Embassy in Moscow. He moved to France in January 1974 after five years of personal intervention on his behalf by President Georges Pompidou. He became a French naturalized citizen in 1978. In Paris he made jewelry and decorative objects for art galleries.

His artwork combines the technique of the dinandery with hard stone incrustations in metal. His first work consisted of brooches and torques. He then went on to create canthares, aquamaniles, rhytons, pyxides and animal figures. He hammers thin sheets of metal.

In 1976 he created the academician's sword for Félicien Marceau. He has created other swords for Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Raymond Barre and Maurice Allais.

His works are exhibited in art galleries and museums, in France and abroad. They are offered by the French Presidents of the Republic, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy, to Foreign Presidents.

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