Serge POLIAKOFF (1900-1969)

Lot 23
Go to lot
Estimation :
8000 - 12000 EUR
Result without fees
Result : 31 000EUR
Serge POLIAKOFF (1900-1969)
Serge POLIAKOFF (1900-1969) Composition. Gouache on paper, signed lower left. 23,5 x 31 cm. Certificate of Alexis Poliakoff dated February 6, 2014. Catalogue raisonné of Serge Poliakoff, Volume IV, n°64-245. In the 1960s, Serge Poliakoff was at the peak of his art. His " plastic poems ", compositions recognizable among all by their vivid flat tints and formal balance, were highly sought after. Less well known, his work as a watercolorist is just as dazzling, as our Composition shows. A mystical and poetic watercolour Composition, punctuated by a subtle cameo of reds, blues and blacks, is both typical of Poliakoff's research and eminently singular. It shows the artist's unique sense of balance between forms and colours, resulting in a visual harmony bordering on mysticism. The use of watercolour, however, gives these coloured ensembles a transparency and poetry that are less reminiscent of Byzantine icons than of the paintings of the Italian primitives. It was during this decade that Poliakoff visited Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel, from which our watercolour seems to have borrowed its colours. A mature work In the 1960s, Serge Poliakoff achieved unprecedented recognition. His paintings and watercolours were the subject of major exhibitions and are kept in the greatest museums of modern art in the world, such as MoMA, the Tate Modern or the Centre Pompidou - in which we find two paintings from 1964 and 1965 of the same tonalities as our watercolour. He is an essential figure of abstraction. Composition translates and justifies, with an unequalled mastery, this assurance. "Poliakoff's painting is one of those that lend themselves least to commentary. It is the world of silence and 'pure painting' [...] But his 'little miracle' is undoubtedly knowing how to make silence vibrate" (in Michel Ragon, "Serge Poliakoff", Arts, 11 November 1964).
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue