Toto

Toto, born Valeri Miqava in 1959 in Tbilisi, Georgia, is a Georgian painter whose practice brings together abstraction, spiritual imagery and the material traditions of painting. A specialist in encaustic and traditional painting techniques, he has developed a distinctive visual language over several decades, combining academic knowledge, iconographic heritage and contemporary experimentation.

His painting is primarily rooted in abstraction and in the development of a visual language of his own. Form, material, memory, and intuition guide a creative process in which the image gradually emerges rather than conforming to a predetermined narrative.Materiality lies at the heart of his approach.

Working with oil, encaustic, tempera, watercolour, drawing, and mixed media, he builds and transforms surfaces through successive layers, creating a tension between structure and movement, permanence and transformation.Spirituality also runs throughout his work.

Drawing on spiritual traditions and his experience in iconography, Toto explores a territory between the perception of reality and the inner world. Figures, architectural forms, signs, and abstraction become elements of a visual vocabulary that deliberately resists any single or definitive interpretation.His extensive knowledge of traditional painting techniques represents another defining aspect of his career.

A specialist in encaustic painting, he has also worked in iconography and restoration, and has produced murals and religious commissions for several churches in Georgia.Since 2003, Toto has served as Head of the Technology Laboratory within the Department of Painting at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts.

Between 2017 and 2024, he also taught encaustic painting within the Iconography and Restoration Program at the Tbilisi Theological Academy.Presented for many years in Georgian museums, galleries, and cultural institutions, his work has also gained an international presence, notably in Spain, France, and Switzerland.

In 2026, this European development continues with presentations in Strasbourg and Basel during Art Basel Week.
At the intersection of pictorial heritage, material experimentation, and inner exploration, Toto creates paintings in which his command of traditional techniques becomes the foundation for a distinctly personal and contemporary language.

Rather than imposing a fixed meaning, his works invite viewers to experience forms, materials, and signs through their own perception and sensibility.