A New Serge Poliakoff Painting on the Market
This abstract composition appears on the market for the first time. It is dated 1956, a milestone year for the painter, who exhibited both in Paris and abroad.
© ADAGP, PARIS, 2024
The work is new to the market. Acquired from the artist in 1956 by a discreet art lover, it has remained in his family until today. In the center, a touch of yellow and red acts as a focal point, shattering the gray-blue shades around it. Built up layer by layer, the painting is alive with irregularities upon which the light stumbles: like a master alchemist of matter, Poliakoff takes advantage of the shades of red that emerge behind the layers of blue. Like a mosaicist, he works his forms like interlocking shards of color, in search of the right balance. In 1957, Jean Lassaigne wrote of his exhibitions at the Galerie Creuzevault (paintings) and the Galerie Berggruen (gouaches): “Poliakoff has a taste for superb materials, which he applies in successive layers, enriching one another; he seems to attach increasing importance to the brushstroke, which he fans out around a center.
As art critic Julien Alvard wrote in XXe siècle magazine, “1956 was a historic year for Poliakoff, who enjoyed growing popularity”.
Although close to Parisian artists, especially the Delaunays and Wassily Kandinsky, Poliakoff evolved outside systems and groups. He embarked on a highly personal quest for the ideal form of color, advocating restrained chromaticism, stripping his palette down to ochre, beige, blue and gray cameos, underpinned by abrupt lines. This organization of forms was already apparent in Orange et cyclamen in 1949: a central shape holds the composition together, dividing or constricting the shapes around it, creating a dynamic akin to musical composition.
Labeled a painter of the New Paris School, he was part of this second wave of abstract artists, more widely exhibited and better accepted. As art critic Julien Alvard wrote in XXe siècle, “1956 was a historic year, with the artist enjoying growing popularity.” Two years later, in 1958, our Composition abstraite 56-84 was exhibited at the Pittsburgh International Exposition, held at the Carnegie Institute. In France, it would be only a year after his death before his first major exhibition was held in 1970 at the MNAM in Paris, where our oil painting was also shown. It has not been seen since, except in the two exhibition catalogs in which it is reproduced.
PAINTINGS FURNITURE & OBJETS D’ART
Friday 29 March 2024 – 14:00 (CET) – Live
Salle 6 – Hôtel Drouot – 75009 Paris
Tessier & Sarrou et Associés
