Michel KIKOINE (Gomel 1892- Cannes 1968)

La Ruche, view on the building called "Fernand Léger Circa 1912-1915 On the back, self-portrait of the artist Oil on canvas 81 x 54 cm Signed lower left "Kikoin". Michel Kikoine was born in Gomel, Lithuania in 1892. He met Soutine in Minsk in 1905 while attending a drawing workshop, then he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilnius from 1908 where he met Pinchus Kremègne. Michel Kikoine arrived in Paris around 1912-1913 and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts where he studied under Fernand Cormon. The artist studied the old masters at the Louvre and was particularly interested in the work of Rembrandt, El Greco and Gustave Courbet. Michel Kikoïne painted "La Ruche, vue plongeante sur le bâtiment dit "Fernand Léger"" around 1912-1915 upon his arrival in Paris when he moved to La Ruche. It is a bird's eye view of the building known as "Fernand Léger". The painting reveals the material left by successive lines with a brush, or by touches applied next to each other. This structured touch is typical of 1912-1915. Works from this period remain rare. A similar work from the same period shows identical formal characteristics (La ruche sous la neige, oil on canvas, 46 x 33 cm, coll. part, n° 748) In an era in the midst of the Cubist revolution, the artist proposed a certain geometrisation of forms. The clean, straight contours of the buildings coexist with the arched shapes of the building's vault and the parterre. The female figures of the water carrier and the mother with child are simplified and surrounded by black. This work shows a certain temptation of the artist at this time for the geometrisation of forms. On the back of the canvas, the artist sketches a self-portrait. Probably dissatisfied, he covers it with oil paint. Behind this whitewash, it is nevertheless possible to see the contours of an upright posture and to guess a fixed look, an expressive face. The rarity of this work lies both in the subject represented, The Beehive, a mythical city of the artists of the School of Paris, and in the period in which it was painted, on his arrival in Paris. The presence of an unpublished youthful self-portrait on the back of the work underlines its importance. Elise Vignault