Léon Zack

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Léon Zack, 1933

Léon Zack ( Russian Лев Васильевич Зак , Lew Wassiljewitsch Zack ; born July 12, 1892 in Nizhny Novgorod , † March 30, 1980 in Vanves ) was a Russian - French painter , illustrator , set designer , costume artist and sculptor .

Life

Léon Zack's father, the pharmacist Wassili Zack , was exiled to Siberia for ten years for participating in Narodniki activities , and Léon Zack was raised by his mother Rosalie. His half-brother from the mother's first marriage was the Russian philosopher Simon Lyudwigowitsch Frank ( Russian Семён Лю́двигович Франк ), and his maternal grandfather was a co-founder of the Moscow Jewish community.

Zack began drawing at the age of 13 and was a student of Jakimchenko from 1905 to 1907 . From 1902 he attended the Lazarew Institute for Oriental Languages . From 1910 he studied literature at Moscow University . He was part of Russian Futurism and took painting lessons from Fyodor Ivanovich Rerberg . His last professor, Ilya Ivanovich Maschkow , a member of the Russian avant-garde artist group Karo-Bube , introduced him to French artists such as Paul Cézanne and André Derain . Zack also met Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Kasimir Severinovich Malevich and Vladimir Mayakovsky . Together with the poet Cherchnevitch, he published a magazine for poetry la Mezzanine de la poésie , in which he also published his own works under the pseudonym M. Rossijansky .

After his marriage in 1917 to Nadezhda Braude (1894-1976), the couple lived in the Crimea from 1918 to 1920 , where their daughter Irène was born in 1918. In April 1920 they left the Ukraine in front of the advancing Bolshevik troops from Yalta with an English ship to Constantinople . Zack obtained an Italian visa after three months of unsuccessful striving for a French one. The family lived in Florence for two years . During a trip to Paris in 1921, he exhibited his lithographs in the Salon des indépendants and Salon d'hiver and met Pablo Picasso and Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov .

In 1922 Zack went to Berlin . There he created sets and costumes for the ballets of the Russian Romantic Theater by Boris Romanoff until 1925 , illustrated The Festival during the Plague by Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin and Machiavelli's Mandragola with lithographs, and exhibited his works in the gallery of Alfred Flechtheim in 1922 and 1923 . At the end of the same year he traveled to Paris with Boris Romanoff's theater, where he settled with his wife, and took part in several exhibitions in the following years, such as the Salon d'Automne , the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Surindépendants , the he co-founded in 1929. In 1926 he had his first solo exhibition of figurative paintings in the Galerie d'Art Contemporain . Until 1930 he belonged to the group of Néo-humanistes around Waldemar George, Christian Bérard , Pavel Tchelitchev and Eugène Bermann. He was represented in group exhibitions abroad, such as in Moscow and Brussels in 1928 and in London and Prague in 1935.

In 1938 he became a French citizen. During the Second World War he was forced to leave Paris in 1940, lived in Biarritz , Arcachon , Villefranche-sur-Mer , Grenoble , among others , and converted to Catholicism in 1941.

In 1945 he returned to Paris, took part in numerous exhibitions and illustrated several books. In 1947 he created the set and costumes for a ballet by Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofiev .

Zack's painting style increasingly changed from figurative to abstract, and in 1948 he showed works with exclusively geometric abstract shapes for the first time in a solo exhibition at the Parisian Galerie des Garets.

From 1950 he also worked with his daughter, the sculptor Irène Zack, designed the interior of several churches in Alsace and designed windows for 30 buildings in the following years, such as the meeting room of the General Council of the Yonne Department in 1957 and numerous churches. In addition, he created tapestries that were executed in the Atelier Plasse Le Caisne , as well as sacred objects such as crosses and altars.

  • View of the crypt of the Bittermark Memorial, Dortmund
  • Memorial Bittermark 2014 2.JPG
  • Memorial Bittermark 2014 5.JPG
  • Memorial Bittermark 2014 7.JPG

In 1959 he settled in Vanves and in the same year began work on the design of the crypt of the Bittermark memorial in Dortmund. In 1960 the mosaics that line the entire interior were completed. The marble stones represent a network of wire shackles. Above the door, dark stones on a light gray background form the word PAX.

plant

L''Ascension tapestry by Léon Zack in St. Georges in Urschenheim, 1951.

Zack belonged to the École de Paris . After many years of figurative painting, his art increasingly developed into the abstract, until his pictures were consistently non-figurative from around 1947. From 1950 he also turned to sacred art and created crucifixes, sculptures for church interiors and stained glass windows for numerous churches.

Works by Zack can be found in numerous museums, such as the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts / University of East Anglia , the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar ( Double portrait d'hommes , on the reverse: Double portrait de femmes 1931; Vierge à l'Enfant 1946; Sans titre 1973) and the Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London ( Peinture 1952, 97.5 × 130.5 cm). The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume acquired the painting Mother and Child in 1935 . Manuscripts with poems by him are preserved in the library of the Faculty of Philology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

Sacred art / stained glass windows (selection)

Altar and cross by Léon Zack in the church of St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, Paris 5th arrondissement, 1971.
Interior of the Church of Saint-Caprais in Carsac, on the walls three of the 14 panels of the Way of the Cross can be seen.
  • 1954 to 1955: stained glass window in the Notre-Dame-des-Pauvres church in Issy-les-Moulineaux . The windows consist of 60 panels over a length of 60 meters.
  • 1955: Sculpture St. Teresa with Jesus and the Way of the Cross made of 14 teracotta plates by Leon Zack and daughter Irène in the Church of Carsac, Carsac-Aillac .
  • 1957: St. Sulpice stained glass window , Paris
  • 1957: Stained glass window in the meeting room of the General Council of the Yonne department
  • 1957: stained glass window in the Notre-Dame de Protection abbey church in Valognes
  • 1959: Marble altar and stained glass window, Sacré-Cœur, Mulhouse
  • 1959/1960: Mosaic, crypt of the Bittermark Memorial in Dortmund
  • 1965: Stained glass window and forged cross, Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc church in the 18th arrondissement of Paris
  • 1967: Stained glass window in the Saint-Louis de Brest church
  • 1971: Altar made of lead-edged oak with a top made of pink marble and a bronze cross (joint design with his daughter Irène) in the church of St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas in Paris.
  • Tapestries made in the Atelier Plasse Le Caisne

Poetry

  • M. Rossijanskij (pseudonym): Utro vnutri - stichotvorenija i poėmy (The Seals). Edited by Vladimir F. Markov. Fink, Munich, 1970

Illustrations (selection)

Stage design / costumes

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1928: Participation in the "Modern French Art" exhibition in Moscow
  • 1946: Katia Granoff Gallery, Paris. Solo exhibition
  • 1949: Galerie des Ga.ets, Paris. Solo exhibition
  • 1949: Cavalino Gallery in Venice
  • 1956: Galerie Kléber, Paris. Solo exhibition
  • 1959: Waddington Gallery, London. Solo exhibition
  • 1960: Galerie Germain, Paris. Solo exhibition
  • 1973: National Museum of History and Art, Luxembourg
  • 1977: Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris . Retrospective
  • 1984: Galerie Protée, Paris. Retrospective
  • 1992, April 4th to November 1st: Prémisses du silence (Sign of Silence). Musée Suisse du Vitrail (Swiss Museum for Stained Glass). Solo exhibition

literature

  • Zack, Leon . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961.
  • Jean Guichard-Meili: La Peinture aujourd'hui. Entretiens avec Zack, Lapicque , Elvire Jan , Carzou , Bertholle , Le Moal , Manessier , Carrade . Bibliothèque de l'homme d'action, Paris 1960, pp. 21–31.
  • Pierre Courthion: Léon Zack , Le Musée de Poche, Ed. Georges Fall, Paris 1961.
  • Jean Grenier : Entretiens avec dix-sept peintres non figuratifs. Bryen , Busse , Carrade , Debré , Deyrolle , Fontené, Gauthier , Germain , Marfaing , Messagier , Music , Sima , Soulages , Szenes , Ubac , Gérard Vulliamy , Zack. Calmann-Levy, Paris 1963, pp. 213-231.
  • Pierre Courthion, Bernard Dorival , Jean Grenier: Léon Zack . Le musée de poche, Ed. Georges Fall, Paris, 1976.
  • Ronald Alley: Catalog of the Tate Gallery Collection of Modern Art. Other Than Works by British Artists . Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, ISBN 0-85667-102-9 , pp. 767-768.
  • Claude Stéphane Perrin: Penser l'art de Léon Zack . Éditions L'Âge d'homme, 1984, new edition 1990, ISBN 2-8251-2211-4 .
  • Jean-Marie Dunoyer: Léon Zack . Paris Édition de la Différence, 1989
  • Jean-Michel Maulpoix: Léon Zack ou l'instinct du ciel . Editions de la Différence, Paris 1990.
  • Alain Pizerra: Léon Zack . Collection L'Autre Musée, Éditions de la Différence, Paris 1991.
  • Léon Zack . Exhibition catalog à la maison des princes de Pérouges (Ain), 1993.
  • Pierre Cabanne: Léon Zack . Catalog raisonné de l'œuvre peint établi par Irène et Florent Zack, Alain Pizerra, Les Éditions de l'Amateur, Paris 1993.
  • Lydia Harambourg, Dictionnaire des peintres de l'École de Paris, 1945-1965 , Éditions Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1993, ISBN 2-8258-0048-1 ; New edition, 2010, pp. 508-511, ISBN 978-2-8258-0241-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Notice d'autorité du catalog général de la BNF
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Asshoff: Suffering in stone. The reliefs of the memorial in the Bittermark. City of Dortmund, Dortmund 2014, pp. 26–27, 29–30.
  3. ↑ Tate Gallery : Artist biography Léon Zack born 1892
  4. ↑ www.patrimoine-histoire.fr: Paris-Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.htm

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zack, Léon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zack, Lev Wassiljewitsch (full name); Зак, Лев Васильевич
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-French artist
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Nizhny Novgorod
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1980
Place of death Vanves