André LANSKOY (1902-1976) Persian story, 1945-1946 Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. Titled and dated on the back on the stretcher. 81 x 117 cm Provenance : - Paris, Galerie Pierre Loeb, 2 rue des Beaux-Arts, 75006 (presumed) - Paris, M.S. Collection M.S., a Parisian collector, was a regular customer of Galerie Pierre Loeb, where he acquired works by Bernard Dufour, Constantin Macris and André Lanskoy. From the late '30s onwards, Lanskoy turned to abstraction. In 1942, he exhibited abstract paintings at the Galerie Berry-Raspail. In 1944, it was at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher that he met his compatriot Nicolas de Staël, with whom he became friends and who, as a younger artist, followed his advice. The Galerie Jeanne Bucher brought together a generation of young artists (Soulages, Poliakoff, Debré, Dewasne, etc.) who tended towards a kind of non-figuration called Abstraction Lyrique, pioneered by Lanskoy. For these young artists, it was Kandinsky who had shown the most decisive and daring path. Lanskoy had been able to exchange ideas with Kandinsky, who had been living in Paris since 1933. In 1944, Lanskoy signed a contract with the Galerie Louis Carré Carré, where he had a retrospective exhibition in 1948 (Lanskoy 1944-48, twenty-four works exhibited). Our painting Histoire persane, dated 1945-46 on the back, bears witness to the painter's stylistic development. Traces of figuration can still be discerned (silhouette, chair in profile in the center of the painting). but a dramatic tension arises here from lines and colors freed from visual reality. This decisive liberation enables him to draw on his memories, his emotional capital and the cultural profusion of his Russian youth. The rhythm of his lines, the violence of his forms, the energy and struggle of his colors are the result of a learned mix: the iconic art of medieval illuminators, the symbolism of the Blue Rose symbolism of the Blue Rose, Larionov's neo-primitivism and rayonism and, of course, Kandinsky's musicality.