Serge Poliakoff (1900-1969) - Composition verte, beige, rouge et brune

Serge Poliakoff (1900-1969) , Composition verte, beige, rouge et brune, 1964.

Color lithograph on strong wove paper by Arches, 19. 5 x 26. 5cm (44. 5 x 55. 5cm) , Chalcographie du Louvre, Paris. Drystamp. Outside the edition of signed and numbered copies on BFK Rives.

Literature: Poliakoff, Alexis and Schneider, Gerard: Serge Poliakoff - Graphics, Estampes, Prints, catalog raisonné of graphics, Munich 1998, WVZ.
-No. 45.

The lithograph is in generally good condition. Minor creases outside of the picture.

biography
The Russian painter Serge Poliakoff, born in Moscow on January 8, 1900, is considered an important representative of the École de Paris. In 1917 he fled the Russian Revolution to Constantinople, and in 1923 he reached Paris, where he spent all but a few years of his life. Initially earning a living as a musician, he simultaneously began intensively studying painting. From 1929 he was enrolled at the Forchot and de la Grande Chaumière academies in Paris, and in 1935 he moved to the Slade School of Art in London for two years. At first he varied the academic traditions and preferred representational motifs such as nudes, houses, trees, etc. After 1935 he gradually found abstraction and used color as color without any representational references. He was decisively influenced in this direction by Kandinsky, whom he met on his return to Paris. From Sonia and Robert Delaunay he learned to appreciate the emotive quality of color and his interest in simultaneous contrasts was awakened. The sculptor Otto Freundlich also exerts a significant influence on Poliakoff's visual language with his curved color-form compositions. Poliakoff develops a very individual form of abstract painting that juxtaposes colorful areas of color. In the 1940s he remained in the gray-brown color range, later, from 1950 onwards, he expanded his range to include bright, contrasting tones. In his late work he reduced the strong polychromy to earth-colored nuances and showed a tendency towards monochrome design. Poliakoff's pictures were presented at international exhibitions in the 1950s and 1960s, and after becoming a French citizen in 1962, the artist received his own room at the Venice Biennale. In the later years, a number of lithographs were created, which Poliakoff devoted himself to, especially from 1962 onwards, as well as smaller-format paintings, as the artist had to take it easy after a heart attack in 1965. Serge Poliakoff died in Paris on October 12, 1969.