Rene Schmerling: The First Woman and Art Historian at the Georgian Soviet Academy of Sciences and Her Forgotten Legacy.
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Rene Schmerling (1904–1967), the first woman art historian at the Georgian Soviet Academy of Sciences, made significant yet overlooked contributions to medieval Georgian architecture. Trained in both art and architectural drawing, she was mentored by Giorgi Chubinashvili and integrated German formalist methods into Soviet scholarship. Her seminal work, Small Forms in Medieval Georgian Architecture, reflected her meticulous approach but was marginalized due to her refusal to adopt Marxist-Leninist ideology. A German in Soviet Georgia, she narrowly escaped deportation during WWII thanks to academic intervention. Her precise sketches helped preserve architectural heritage, yet her legacy remains overshadowed by male peers. This paper reclaims Schmerling’s role as a trailblazer, examining how her gender, nationality, and intellectual autonomy shaped her career within a restrictive ideological system. |
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