Serge Poliakoff

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Serge Poliakoff , Russian Серж Поляков (* December 27, 1899 . Jul / 8. January  1900 greg. In Moscow ; † 12. October 1969 in Paris ) was a Russian painter. He is considered an important representative of the Nouvelle École de Paris .

Life

Serge Poliakoff's story begins in Kyrgyzstan in the Russian hinterland near the Chinese border. His father, Georg Poliakoff, owned large horse breeds there. This nature-loving life with horses seems to have shaped Georg Poliakoff so much that he later found work in this area when he settled in Moscow: he became a member of the imperial horse breeding and was commissioned with the recruitment of horses for the imperial army. So it was almost inevitable that he would pass his passion on to his son Serge. As far as we know today, Georg Poliakoff does not seem to have lived in Kyrgyzstan, but in the city of Tula near Moscow, where he also met his future wife Agrippina Stroukoff . Serge Poliakoff was born in Moscow on January 8th as the thirteenth child. His family, who lived a comfortable and affluent life in Moscow, seemed to be cohesive. Thus his education, which Serge received from his parents, was also subject to the various influences of his siblings. The future painter's childhood and youth were therefore very stimulating and instructive, and encouraged the development of the various facets of his personality. Since his mother was very musical, Serge Poliakoff's talents were encouraged through an appealing musical education. At the age of twelve, the young Serge was already playing the guitar perfectly. The love of painting, or at least the need to express oneself in plastic, showed up relatively early. When he was about twelve years old, Serge, a great admirer of Napoleon, decorated his room with murals depicting the great deeds of his hero. So from 1914 he also attended painting courses in Moscow. However, the revolution in 1917 was to shake this fulfilled life full of privileges profoundly and end the studies and this first phase of Serge Poliakoff's life.

In 1920 the situation in Moscow became very critical. Georg Poliakoff decided to send his two youngest children, Serge and his sister Sophie, to the country with their mother, where they would be housed with a former servant. But he hadn't expected his son's plans. He had secretly decided to leave Russia and carefully planned his escape. He used the change at a train station and informed his sister of his intentions; he asked her not to say anything to his mother - whom he was never to see again - in order not to be prevented from doing his job, and disappeared. He tried to reach the White Army that night and finally arrived in Kiev after a dramatic train ride on which he hid under a coal wagon. More favorable turns followed, through which he was able to get through to his uncle Dimitri. Together they crossed the Caucasus, lived for some time in Tbilisi and were able to earn a living with their musical talents. In Georgia, where his aunt Nastia, a singer, joined them, they finally succeeded in embarking for Constantinople. Via Sofia, Belgrade, Vienna and Berlin, Poliakoff finally came to Paris in 1923, where he would spend his life for a few years.

In Paris he began an intensive study of painting. He earned his living from 1923–1951 as a musician, a. a. as a guitarist in Russian cabarets. From 1929 he was enrolled at the Paris Académie Frochot and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . In 1935 he went to London for two years and first attended the Chelsea School of Art , then the Slade School of Art .

Serge Poliakoff died in Paris on October 12, 1969.

painting

Initially, Poliakoff varied the academic traditions and preferred figurative motifs such as nudes, houses, trees and the like. 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. Through Sonia and Robert Delaunay , he learned to appreciate the emotive quality of color, and interest in simultaneous contrasts was aroused. The sculptor Otto Freundlich also exerted a significant influence on Poliakoff's visual language with his curved compositions of color shapes. Poliakoff developed a very individual form of abstract painting that juxtaposes brightly colored surfaces. In the forties it stayed in the gray-brown color range, later, from 1950 onwards, it expanded its range to include bright, contrasting tones. In his late work he reduced the strong polychromy to earthy nuances and showed a tendency towards monochrome design.

reception

Poliakoff's work was shown in the most important European and American museums in the 1950s and 1960s. Serge Poliakoff was a participant in documenta II (1959) and documenta III in 1964 in Kassel . After being naturalized in France in 1962, the artist was given his own room at the Venice Biennale .

Poliakoff (and French modernism in general) was also highly valued in Germany in the post-war period. The large public collections (Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Saarbrücken, Wuppertal ...) acquired his pictures. American art came to the fore in the 1980s, and Poliakoff's pictures disappeared from magazines.

Public collections

Works

  • 1953: Composition en bleu , oil on canvas, 116 × 89 cm (Salis & Vertes Gallery, Zurich / Salzburg)
  • 1956: Composition abstraite , oil on wood, 116 × 89 cm (Salis & Vertes Gallery, Zurich / Salzburg)
  • 1957: Composition , oil on canvas, 121 × 85 cm (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan)
  • 1964: Composition grise et rouge , oil on canvas, 160 × 130 cm

literature

  • Poliakoff . Catalog for the exhibition from June 12 to July 24, 1963, Kestner Society, Hanover 1963
  • Serge Poliakoff. Retrospective . Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7774-3505-3
  • Alexis Poliakoff, Gérard Schneider, Serge Poliakoff - Catalog raisonné of graphics. Éditions Galerie Française, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3-00-002049-0 (German / French / English)
  • Alexis Poliakoff / Gérard Durozoi, Serge Poliakoff - Monograph - Monograph - Catalog Raisonné. Acatos Publishing, Paris; Éditions Galerie Française, Munich 2004–2016 (6 volumes, monograph French, catalog raisonné French / English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ For example, the then State Gallery of Modern Art in Munich showed a picture in 1987. In the Pinakothek der Moderne, on the other hand, all three Poliakoff pictures in the collection will be stored in 2019. - Carla Schulz-Hoffmann u. a .: State Gallery of Modern Art Munich - A tour through the collection. Bruckmann, Munich 1987, p. 125; same picture: online catalog of the Pinakotheken, "Not on display" .
  2. ^ Website of the Pinacoteca di Brera
personal data
SURNAME Poliakoff, Serge
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Поляко́в, Серж (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1969
Place of death Paris