Lot 4 | Serge Poliakoff | Composition abstraite

‘Composition abstraite’

Serge Poliakoff's abstract compositions demand a lot from the viewer. Revolutionary and disturbing avant-garde works of art in the post-war period, now established classics of the ‘Nouvelle École de Paris’, it takes time to look behind the superficial ‘curtain’ of decorative colour fields.

Shades of grey dominate this ‘Composition abstraite’ from 1956. In large, sometimes very angular colour fields, they occupy the peripheral zone of the canvas. Smaller, coloured forms are built into the centre: a rich yellow, a light pink, a black and, as the only two-tone colour, red, which appears in a larger, angular form and in a smaller, approximate rectangle. The warm red pigment has spread across the entire painting. It appears in almost all the other colour fields, either as a shimmering, deeper-lying colour or as the last overpainting. Like a bracket, the red pigment connects the surfaces, which begin to oscillate when viewed for a longer period of time.

Overpaintings and underpaintings, as practised by Serge Poliakoff, could lead to the paintings changing over the years. Serge Poliakoff respected this ‘independent existence’ of his pictures. He liked the patina and also the fact that the paintings revealed their process of creation.

Well-deserved recognition

This painting dates from the phase of Serge Poliakoff's life in which he was now fully established after many decades of uncertainty. He was sure of his own artistic expression and had achieved a financial basis since 1952 that enabled him to make a living from his art. Now, four years later, his social and artistic recognition is so great that he and his family have their first permanent residence in Paris and can also afford some luxuries with which the artist, who grew up in the upper-middle-class circles of Moscow, is familiar: he becomes the owner of a racehorse and a (used) Rolls Royce.

In 1956, the year this painting was created, Poliakoff won the prestigious Premio Lissone and the first monograph on his work was published.

Alexandra Bresges-Jung