Details

Provenance

Hanover Gallery, London Galeria Dinastia, Lisbon Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, Part I , 7 February 2001, Lot 34 Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Lisbon, Galeria Dinastia, Pintores do seculo XX, 1973, no. 23, illustrated in colour Paris, Galerie Boulakia, Selection One , 1973, no. 37, illustrated

Literature

Giuseppe Marchiori, Serge Poliakoff , Paris 1976, p. 86, illustrated Françoise Brütsch, Serge Poliakoff , Neuchâtel 1993, pp. 97-98, illustrated Catalogue Note The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Alexis Poliakoff Executed in 1956, the present work is a wonderful example of Poliakoff’s superlative abilities to marry shape, colour and texture into an organic, abstract whole. Executed both with the brush and the palette knife, the viewer is presented with a deeply saturated palette of blues, reds and yellows that are counterbalanced with warm ochres and burnt oranges. These resplendent hues achieve a delicate equilibrium that transcends both the rigour of geometry and the materiality of nature. In 1952, Serge Poliakoff discovered the purified Cubo-Futuristic art of the great Russian Modernist, Kasimir Malevich. Malevich’s pioneering Suprematist compositions and minimal palette inspired Poliakoff to reduce his pictorial vocabulary and thus intensify his abstract design to blocks of interconnecting hues and tones, lyrically flowing across the canvas like a patchwork quilt. The present work comes from a period where all Poliakoff’s experiments with this design had been completed, and this truly outstanding example declares a maturity of form, colour and compositional balance that must be regarded as one of the artist’s finest works. A wonderful, irreducible sense of movement is evident here. As Poliakoff has superimposed colour and shape on and against each other, so the canvas seems to toss and turn in its puzzle-like assembly, bursting out of the picture plane in a luminous, almost limitless expansiveness. The central horizontal axis holds the more primary, richer tones, contained in smaller, tighter forms. These are counterbalanced by the lighter hues in the more expansive passages that surround them. Interestingly, Poliakoff has made these border areas of colour ticker than the central forms, so that a vortex of colour and texture is wonderfully achieved, forcing the viewer’s eye in and out of the centre of the canvas, thereby emphasising the compositional elements.

Catalog summary

Serge Poliakoff Composition signed; signed and dated 1957 on the reverse oil on panel 96.5 by 129.5cm. 38 by 51in. According to Alexis Poliakoff, this work was executed in 1956, although dated 1957 by the artist Provenance Hanover Gallery, London Galeria Dinastia, Lisbon Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, Part I , 7 February 2001, Lot 34 Acquired directly from the above by the present owner Exhibited Lisbon, Galeria Dinastia, Pintores do seculo XX, 1973, no. 23, illustrated in colour Paris, Galerie Boulakia, Selection One , 1973, no. 37, illustrated Literature Giuseppe Marchiori, Serge Poliakoff , Paris 1976, p. 86, illustrated Françoise Brütsch, Serge Poliakoff , Neuchâtel 1993, pp. 97-98, illustrated Catalogue Note The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Alexis Poliakoff Executed in 1956, the present work is a wonderful example of Poliakoff’s superlative abilities to marry shape, colour and texture into an organic, abstract whole. Executed both with the brush and the palette knife, the viewer is presented with a deeply saturated palette of blues, reds and yellows that are counterbalanced with warm ochres and burnt oranges. These resplendent hues achieve a delicate equilibrium that transcends both the rigour of geometry and the materiality of nature. In 1952, Serge Poliakoff discovered the purified Cubo-Futuristic art of the great Russian Modernist, Kasimir Malevich. Malevich’s pioneering Suprematist compositions and minimal palette inspired Poliakoff to reduce his pictorial vocabulary and thus intensify his abstract design to blocks of interconnecting hues and tones, lyrically flowing across the canvas like a patchwork quilt. The present work comes from a period where all Poliakoff’s experiments with this design had been completed, and this truly outstanding example declares a maturity of form, colour and compositional balance that must be regarded as one of the artist’s finest works. A wonderful, irreducible sense of movement is evident here. As Poliakoff has superimposed colour and shape on and against each other, so the canvas seems to toss and turn in its puzzle-like assembly, bursting out of the picture plane in a luminous, almost limitless expansiveness. The central horizontal axis holds the more primary, richer tones, contained in smaller, tighter forms. These are counterbalanced by the lighter hues in the more expansive passages that surround them. Interestingly, Poliakoff has made these border areas of colour ticker than the central forms, so that a vortex of colour and texture is wonderfully achieved, forcing the viewer’s eye in and out of the centre of the canvas, thereby emphasising the compositional elements.