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Serge Poliakoff
"You must forget that each form has two colors; one is the interior, the other is the exterior."
+ Coup de coeur
Discover our "Coups de coeur"
"Coup de coeur" by Serge Poliakoff
Composition mauve, grise et jaune - Février 2020
Gouache originale signée au crayon, circa 1954.
« Il n’y a là ni côté droit, ni côté gauche
Point de sommet, aucun abîme
Tout y demeure enclos, partout ce qui le cerne
Est maintenu dans une ferme discipline
Pourtant ce monde-ci, le tout immobile
Se meut, semblable à sa propre immobilité. » Serge Poliakoff
Au moment où Serge Poliakoff peint cette gouache si subtile (vers 1954), il est déjà en pleine possession de son langage pictural. Ce langage, il l’a construit, pensé, mûri durant de longues années de recherches.
En 1935, il gratte de l’ongle la peinture d’un sarcophage égyptien exposé à Londres, et découvre que la vie de la couleur est le fait d’une superposition de tons. Puis en 1952, la toile blanche de Malevitch « Carré blanc sur fond blanc » le conforte dans ses recherches sur la vibration de la matière.
+ Stamp
Stamp by Serge Poliakoff
The publication of a postal stamp is often a homage paid by a nation to a place, an event, a remarkable cause or a character which count. The painters and other artists do not escape from this rule. Some are however "forgotten" of postal art. Here, gathered below (French or foreign), emitted stamps (206) or simple studies of stamp (224) in homage to the artists represented on our website. The first French stamp was emitted in 1849, England preceded us by ten years. There is often a share of voyage in this small form of shape paper. The stamp circulates, sails, flies away, it makes dream, then dream a little. M.C.
When the stamp is really emitted, the artist name is preceded of an asterisk (*). It is certain that we do not know each stamp emitted for such or such artist; do not hesitate with us to make known them!
Discover all the stamps
+ Autograph
Artist's dedicace
Document in reproduction / This document is not for sale
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A tribute to Serge Poliakoff
Sorry this section is only available in french for now.
Serge Poliakoff s’est éteint à Paris, le 12 octobre 1969, alors même qu'il préparait son exposition au Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, exposition qui aura lieu à titre posthume. Il repose au cimetière russe de St Geneviève des bois (Essonne). Il y a là Antoine Pevsner, André Lanskoy. Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, l’église du cimetière, est bâtie dans le style architecturale des églises de Novgorod. En hommage à sa mémoire, un dahlia.
"Pour l'avenir, je mise sur Poliakoff." - Wassily Kandinsky (1937)
"Chaque été, je voyais mon père préparer son équipement léger de peintre et ses cartons à dessins. Cela signifiait pour moi : saison des vacances. Pour Poliakoff, c'était la saison des gouaches." - Alexis Poliakoff, fils du peintre
"La couleur ou la tonalité de la couleur n'importent pas, seule importe la qualité de la couleur." - Serge Poliakoff
"Mon père broyait lui-même ses couleurs ; il avait mis sept ans à découvrir ce qu'il pensait être le secret de leur transparence." - Alexis Poliakoff, fils du peintre
"Technique.. vous pouvez toujours copier.. formidable.. mais la lumière de la couleur.. jamais.. impossible." - Serge Poliakoff
"Pour Serge Poliakoff, l'abstraction n'est pas sécheresse ; la pâte dont il pétrit ses toiles n'est jamais à son gré assez riche pour sa propre richesse." - François Chatelet
Notes of biography
Serge Poliakoff was born in 1900 in Moscow, Russia. He grew up in a well-off family that belonged to a refined society. His father was a horse breeder. He studied music. Due to the revolution Poliakoff fled his country in 1918 and moved to Paris in 1923 after having lived in various places; Istanbul, Sofia, Belgrade and Berlin. He took drawing lesions at the Academy of the Grande-Chaumiere then at the Slade School in London from 1935-1937. He moved back to Paris. He painted nudes. In order to survive, he played the guitar in the Russians cabarets. His first solo exhibition was organized in Paris in 1937 at the Zak Gallery. He participated in numerous Parisian Salons.
It’s during this time that the artist follows Kandinsky, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, on the road to abstraction. Poliakoff overlaps his free forms working essentially with the intensity of color, looking for transparency. The critics pull him to pieces sometimes for the decorative aspect of his work; Poliakoff reacts by turning towards a more somber palette; black, ruby, ochre, etc. The painter, like the engraver, wants to create ‘pictorial poems’.
At the beginning of the 50’s his works become more geometric, the artist produces symmetrical and asymmetrical compositions. In the 60’s, Serge Poliakoff, abandons constructed and architectural forms to produce canvases that are almost monochrome, where only the intensity of color varies.
His work, throughout his career will be regularly exhibited in France and abroad, in museums, galleries and shows. Poliakoff receives numbers important prizes; the Kandinsky prize, Lisbon, the Tokyo Biennale, etc., but unfortunately does not obtain the Biennale of Venice in 1962, the prize that seemed to be promised to him, but instead it is Alfred Manessier who receives it.
There is evidence in the artist’s works, despite him being accused of having only painted the same painting over again, a dimension that arouses contemplation and profound meditation.
Serge Poliakoff died in Paris in 1969.
Artists on display
The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.
Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.
We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.
Complete work(s)
Complete work(s)
*« Les estampes », Y. Rivière, Ed. Y. Rivière, Paris, 1974
*« Serge Poliakoff : Graphik - Estampes - Prints », A. Poliakoff et G. Schneider, Ed. Galerie Française, Munich, 1998
* « Monographie-L'oeuvre peint 1900-1954 », A. Poliakoff, Vol. I, Ed. Acatos, 2005
* « L'oeuvre peint 1955-1958 », A. Poliakoff, Vol. II, Ed. Galerie Française, 2010
* « L'oeuvre peint 1959-1962 », A. Poliakoff, Vol. III, Ed. Galerie Française, 2011
* « L'oeuvre peint 1963-1965 », A. Poliakoff, Vol. IV, Ed. Galerie Française, 2012
* « L'oeuvre peint 1969-1969 », A. Poliakoff, Vol. V, Ed. Galerie Française, 2016
All the complete works
Bibliographic track and more
To read about the artist :
- « Poliakoff », MAM de la Ville de Paris, 1970
- « Poliakoff : Rétrospective », Musée des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, 1975
- « Poliakoff », G. Durozoi, La Différence, Paris, 1984
- « Rétrospective S. Poliakoff 91 », D. Vallier, cat. d'expo., Galerie Melki, 1991
- « Serge Poliakoff », D. Vierny et autres, RMN, Paris, 1996
- « Serge Poliakoff : La saison des gouaches », A. Poliakoff, Ed. Hazan, Paris, 2004
- « Serge Poliakoff : Rétrospective », collectif, Ed. Mardaga, 2009
- « Serge Poliakoff, mon grand-père », M.-V. Poliakoff, Ed. du Chêne, Paris, 2011
- « Serge Poliakoff », F. Brutsch, coll. Polychromes , Ed. Ides et Calendes, 2013
- « Serge Poliakoff : le rêve des formes », collectif, Ed. Paris Musées, 2013
To read from the artist :
- « Poliakoff », Galerie Räber, Luzerne, 1965
Website :
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/poliakoffMore :
+ Stamp
Stamp by Serge Poliakoff
The publication of a postal stamp is often a homage paid by a nation to a place, an event, a remarkable cause or a character which count. The painters and other artists do not escape from this rule. Some are however "forgotten" of postal art. Here, gathered below (French or foreign), emitted stamps (206) or simple studies of stamp (224) in homage to the artists represented on our website. The first French stamp was emitted in 1849, England preceded us by ten years. There is often a share of voyage in this small form of shape paper. The stamp circulates, sails, flies away, it makes dream, then dream a little. M.C.
When the stamp is really emitted, the artist name is preceded of an asterisk (*). It is certain that we do not know each stamp emitted for such or such artist; do not hesitate with us to make known them!
Discover all the stamps
+ Autograph
Artist's dedicace
Document in reproduction / This document is not for sale
+ Watch
Watch
+ A tribute to...
See all the tribute pages...
A tribute to Serge Poliakoff
Sorry this section is only available in french for now.
Serge Poliakoff s’est éteint à Paris, le 12 octobre 1969, alors même qu'il préparait son exposition au Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, exposition qui aura lieu à titre posthume. Il repose au cimetière russe de St Geneviève des bois (Essonne). Il y a là Antoine Pevsner, André Lanskoy. Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, l’église du cimetière, est bâtie dans le style architecturale des églises de Novgorod. En hommage à sa mémoire, un dahlia.
"Pour l'avenir, je mise sur Poliakoff." - Wassily Kandinsky (1937)
"Chaque été, je voyais mon père préparer son équipement léger de peintre et ses cartons à dessins. Cela signifiait pour moi : saison des vacances. Pour Poliakoff, c'était la saison des gouaches." - Alexis Poliakoff, fils du peintre
"La couleur ou la tonalité de la couleur n'importent pas, seule importe la qualité de la couleur." - Serge Poliakoff
"Mon père broyait lui-même ses couleurs ; il avait mis sept ans à découvrir ce qu'il pensait être le secret de leur transparence." - Alexis Poliakoff, fils du peintre
"Technique.. vous pouvez toujours copier.. formidable.. mais la lumière de la couleur.. jamais.. impossible." - Serge Poliakoff
"Pour Serge Poliakoff, l'abstraction n'est pas sécheresse ; la pâte dont il pétrit ses toiles n'est jamais à son gré assez riche pour sa propre richesse." - François Chatelet
Art movements
+ SCHOOL OF PARIS / 1945-1960 / Jean Degottex, Georges Mathieu, Nicolas de Staël, etc.
+ NEW REALITIES / 1946-1956 / Etienne Béothy, Marcelle Cahn, etc.
+ LYRIC ART, ABSTRACT, TACHISM / 1950-1960 / Jackson Pollock, Emil Schumacher, etc.
All art movements
See & discover
Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.
These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier
See & discover