116 - Alexis GRITCHENKO (Krolevets 1883 – Vence 1977)

Alexis GRITCHENKO (Krolevets 1883 – Vence 1977) Landscape of Santa Clara Painted in 1956 Oil on panel 54 x 73 cm Signed and dated lower left "Gritchenko 56" On the back of the panel, the artist’s handwritten label with the title "Santa Clara" Provenance: Marcelle T. Collection, Paris Later passed down through the family Alexis Gritchenko was a Ukrainian painter, watercolorist, writer, and art critic associated with the School of Paris. He was born in Krolevets, then part of the Russian Empire. He studied from 1905 to 1912 at universities in Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, and Moscow. He studied painting and drawing in the studio of S.I. Svetoslavski from 1906 to 1908, in the studio of K.F. Iouon and I. Dudin from 1909 to 1910, and under P.P. Konchalovsky and I.I. Mashkov from 1911 to 1912 in Moscow. He also worked in V.I. Tatlin’s studio and studied Sergei Shchukin’s collection, which included works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. In 1911, Alexis Gritchenko visited Paris and the Louvre, where he met the painters André Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, and Henri Le Fauconnier. He embarked on a trip to Italy and returned to Moscow, where he developed an avant-garde theory he called “Tsvetodinamos” (Color-Movement), whose fundamentals centered on the importance of masses of color that define and divide space. Alexis Gritchenko’s theory became intertwined with the various Moscow avant-garde movements, including the primitivism of Alexander Shevchenko, Natalia Goncharova, and Mikhail Larionov; the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich; and Constructivism. Alexis Gritchenko became a professor at a state-run open studio in 1918, where he taught the essence of the theory alongside Alexandre Chevtchenko. Rejecting the Bolshevik dictatorship, he decided to head west; he traveled to Kyiv, then, from Sevastopol, went on to Constantinople, where he stayed for two years. During those two years in Constantinople, he painted watercolor scenes of everyday life and landscapes. He traveled to Greece in 1921, arrived in Marseille, France, in the fall of 1921, and finally made his way to Paris. In Paris, he was particularly active in the art scene. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne from 1921 to 1945, at the Salon des Tuileries from 1928 to 1948, and participated in numerous exhibitions organized by renowned galleries in France and abroad, notably at the Galerie Dominique, the Bing Gallery, the Katia Granoff Gallery, the Druet Gallery, the Galerie de l’Élysée, the Weill Gallery, and the Bernheim Jeune Gallery. The painter was also supported by the art dealers Paul Guillaume and Léopold Zborowski. Gritchenko’s works are now held in the collections of museums such as MoMA in New York, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. E.V. Born in the Ottoman Empire into a family of six children, Marcelle T. lived in Istanbul until 1925. Coming from a Francophile family, she studied at Notre-Dame de Sion, as well as at the German School, since the French school had been forced to close during World War I. Her father, a great lover of painting, introduced her to the art and likely arranged for her to meet Alexis Gritchenko during his stay in Istanbul from 1919 to 1921. Marcelle T. moved to Paris in 1925 with her husband, where she lived until her death. Her father, who had been appointed to a post in France, also settled in Paris in 1927 and continued to share his passion for painting with his daughter. They reconnected with Alexis Gritchenko, who was now living in France, and Marcelle T. acquired several of his paintings. These paintings have remained in the family ever since; her grandson discovered them as a child during his regular visits to his grandmother’s home.