Serge Poliakoff was a Russian-born French modernist painter. Born in Moscow as the thirteenth of fourteen children, he grew up in a deeply religious household; his father was a racehorse breeder for the Czar’s cavalry.

Fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917, he lived in Constantinople, where he became known as a gifted guitarist. By 1923, he was living in Paris, performing in Russian cabarets while studying fine art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Frochot under former Fauve Othon Friesz. His early work remained academic.

His breakthrough came in his mid-30s, after moving to London and meeting Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and Otto Freundlich. Influenced by their views on colour, light and form, he developed the distinctive abstract style that established him as one of the most important abstract painters of the 20th century.

Poliakoff’s collaboration with Atelier Mourlot after the Second World War played an important role in consolidating his reputation within post-war abstraction. Lithography allowed him to explore colour and form in new ways, translating the balance and tension of his paintings into original prints.