Sale: 393 / Post War/Contemporary Art, June 09. 2012 in Munich Lot 212

 
Serge Poliakoff - Composition, Bleues et verts


212
Serge Poliakoff
Composition, Bleues et verts, 1962.
Gouache
Estimate:
€ 25,000 / $ 27,000
Sold:
€ 46,360 / $ 50,068

(incl. surcharge)
Composition, Bleues et verts. 1962.
Gouache.
Signed lower right. On Ingres laid paper by Montgolfier St. Marcel les Annonay with watermark). 48,2 x 63 cm (18,9 x 24,8 in), the full sheet.

Accompanied by a photo expertise issued by the archive of Serge Poliakoff dated 11 April, 1996.

PROVENANCE: Private collection North-Rhine Westphalia.

The Russian painter Serge Poliakoff, born in Moscow on 8 January 1900, is one of the most important members of the Ecole de Paris. He fled the Russian Revolution in 1917, first going to Constantinople and then to Paris in 1923, where he spent most years of his life. He began studying painting while earning a living as a musician. He enrolled at the Académie Forchot and Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris 1929 and went to London in 1935 where he studied at the Slade School of Art. At first he produced variations of academic traditions and predominantly figurative motifs such as nudes, houses, trees etc. After 1935 Poliakoff increasingly turned towards abstract art, employing color as color without any figurative context. A decisive influence in this direction was Kandinsky, whom he met after his return to Paris. Sonia and Robert Delaunay taught him to appreciate the emotive quality of color and awakened an interest in simultaneous contrasts. Another important source of Poliakoff's pictorial language was the sculptor Otto Freundlich with his curved color-form compositions. Poliakoff developed a very individual form of abstract painting, arranging different colored fields of color next to one another. Shades of brown and gray were his preferred colors during the 1940s, while after the 1950s he extended his palette including bright contrasting tones. In his late work Poliakoff abandoned the polychrome palette and returned to earth tones and more monochrome works. Poliakoff's paintings were shown at international exhibitions during the 1950s and 1960s, after his nationalization in France in 1962 the artist received his own room at the Biennale in Venice.

With this work "Composition, Bleues et verts" Poliakoff made an impressive composition full of tension by means of a strong reduction of a coloring of lucent shades of blue and green. The color fields, joined like a jigsaw have a lively depth through their multi-layer buildup and their overlapping. With an immeasurable creative power Poliakoff lets us rediscover abstract painting in his works time and again: "Many say that there is nothing to see in abstract art. If asking me, I could live three times as long and I wouldn’t be able to tell what I have seen." (Serge Poliakoff, quote after: Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, vol. 31, issue 21, III 1995, p. 2).

Over the later years a number of lithographs, to which Poliakoff attended since 1962, as well as small format paintings were created, when the artist had to take care of himself after a heart attack in 1965. Serge Poliakoff died in Paris on 12 October 1969. [EH/KH].




212
Serge Poliakoff
Composition, Bleues et verts, 1962.
Gouache
Estimate:
€ 25,000 / $ 27,000
Sold:
€ 46,360 / $ 50,068

(incl. surcharge)