Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly onto black oilcloth. In 1882 he opened a workshop in Tbilisi which was unsuccessful. In 1890 he worked as a railroad conductor, and in 1895 worked creating signboards. In 1893 he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi which he left in 1901. Throughout his life Pirosmani, who was always poor, was willing to take up ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than abstract aesthetics.

In April 1918 he died of malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location is unknown as it was not registered.

[edit] Work
At the beginning of 20th century Pirosmani lived in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station. His paintings included many local scenes and imaginary portraits of Georgian historical figures such as Shota Rustaveli and Queen Tamara, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday life.

In the 1910s he won the critical enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper “Zakavkazskaia Rech’”, which it published on February 13, 1913. He also undertook to publicise Pirosmani’s painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper “Moskovskaia Gazeta” of January 7 wrote about the exhibition “Mishen’” where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: “Portrait of Zhdanevich”, “Still Life”, “Woman with a Beer Mug”, and “The Roe”. Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.

In the same year an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper “Temi” .

The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. Although he presented to the Society his painting ‘Georgian Wedding’, one of the members published a caricature of him which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work effectively unrecognised.

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