Printer: Mourlot

Dimensions: 75 x 51 cm

Condition: Very good 

Available: Sold

Artist: Serge Poliakoff was a Russian-born French modernist painter. Born in Moscow, he was the thirteenth of fourteen children. His mother was hugely religious and his father was a racehorse breeder and supplier of horses to the Czar’s cavalry. The young Serge fled from the Revolution of 1917 and lived in Constantinople as a talented guitarist. In 1923, he was living in Paris as a musician regularly performing in Russian cabarets, and studying fine art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Frochot where he was taught by former Fauve, Othon Friesz. Much of his work at that stage was still academic. It wasn’t until his mid-30s, when he moved to London and began to mix with fellow countryman Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and Otto Freundlich, that he developed his distinct way of abstract painting with colour, light and form that he became one of the most important abstract painters of the 20th century.