3446 - SERGE POLIAKOFF

SERGE POLIAKOFF (Moscow 1900–1969 Paris) Abstract Composition. 1952. Oil on canvas. Signed lower right: Serge Poliakoff. 89 × 130 cm. Provenance: - Christie’s auction, London, April 6, 1989, lot 570. - Galerie Pro Arta, Zurich (label on the reverse). - Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above gallery in 1989. Exhibited: - New York City, 1953, Serge Poliakoff, Circle & Square Gallery, March 3–21, 1953. - Paris, Galerie Melki, Paris (label on the reverse). xxx - Zurich 1989, Serge Poliakoff, Galerie Pro Arta, October 13–December 1, 1989, cat. p. 19 (ill.). Literature: - Alexis Poliakoff: Serge Poliakoff. Catalogue raisonné, Paris 2010, vol. I, p. 397, no. 52–04 (ill.). - Gérard Durozoi: Serge Poliakoff. Expressions contemporaines, Angers 2001, p. 164 (ill.). This work is registered in the Archives Serge Poliakoff, Paris, under no. 952025. Born in Moscow, Serge Poliakoff left Russia in 1917 and arrived in Paris in 1923 after a period of travel. Alongside his work as a guitarist, he devoted himself to painting and, from the late 1930s onward, developed an increasingly distinctive abstract visual language. Influenced by Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, and the Russian icon tradition, he focused on the expressive power of color and the interplay of free forms. Painted in 1952, “Composition abstraite” belongs to the Nouvelle École de Paris and the tradition of lyrical abstraction. Poliakoff developed an autonomous pictorial order in which color, form, and materiality take on central importance. He remained largely faithful to his characteristic visual language throughout his career. His compositions follow a recognizable framework of principal lines and axes that clearly structure the image. The main axes run vertically, horizontally, and diagonally through the center, although the diagonals are slightly offset rather than pointing precisely toward the corners of the support. The composition comprises four large, interlocking color fields whose irregular contours create a composition that is both tense and balanced. Ochre yellow, blue, deep red, and off-white meet directly. Poliakoff deliberately dispenses with illusionistic spatial depth. Nevertheless, the shifting contours produce a subtle spatial effect: some areas appear to advance while others recede. The relationship between warm and cool tones, dark and light areas, and straight and organic boundaries determines the visual rhythm. The granular, at times almost relief-like surface reinforces the painting’s material presence. Fine irregularities within the color fields disrupt their uniformity and lend them vitality. The eye moves between the contrasting color fields without finding a clear focal point. A dynamic equilibrium emerges in which each color exerts its own effect while relating to adjacent areas. Abstraction thus appears not as rigid geometry but as an organically developed, almost musical order of color, form, and rhythm.