Serge POLIAKOFF (1900-1969) Lot n° 60

Abstract Composition, 1956 Gouache on paper. Signed lower right 41 x 56 cm Former Weiss collection (Paris). (Restorations) Exhibitions : -1956, Paris, Galerie Bing, Serge Poliakoff from 9/10 to 1/11/ 1956. Bibliography : -Catalog raisonné of Serge Poliakoff, Volume II, 1955-1958, by Thaddée and Alexis Poliakoff, Editions Galerie Française (Munich), illustrated under No. 56105 p.154, listed under archive No. 856021. Serge Poliakoff is a Russian painter whose paternal branch is Kirghiz, his deeply religious mother takes him to church every day and the spirituality of icons deeply impregnates the young artist. After studying at the Moscow School of Design, his family left Russia during the 1917 revolution. His personal relationships with Kandinsky, the Delaunays and Freundlich led him to abandon figurative art in the 1940s and he soon became one of the main actors of the Paris School and the post-war abstract movement. In 1947, he painted in Gordes, trained by Jean Deyrolle, in the company of many of his friends such as Schneider, Gilioli, Vasarely, Dewasne, eminent representatives of abstraction. Poliakoff seeks a balance between forms and colors: the subtle interlocking of surfaces suggest to the eye an optical vibration not based on geometry but on a chromatic mosaic varied to infinity. As here, the surfaces are assembled around softened arcs or on the contrary of aggressive angulations and the colors are tinged with the nuances of the Russian soul sometimes joyful and sometimes deeply melancholic.