Serge Poliakoff
Biography
Sa peinture comporte des variations de forms et de textures, découpées et imbriquées les unes dans les other, s'épurant par des mises en place intuitives et savantes.Born in Moscow in 1910 (some sources indicate 1906), Serge Poliakoff became one of the most important representative of the “Ecole de Paris”. He fled the Russian Revolution in 1917 and first came to Constantinople, where he earned his living as a coffeehouse musician. At the same time he studied painting. From 1929 he was enrolled in the Forchot and Grande Chaumière academies in Paris. He then spent two years at the Slade School of Art in London. At the Venice Biennale in 1962 he had an entire room to himself. Serge Poliakoff died in Paris in 1969.
Poliakoff's early work was figurative and slightly academic. He mainly painted nudes, landscapes and interiors. But even then his preference for irregular image patterns became apparent. A little later he turned to free, very colorful compositions (reminiscent of early Kandinsky), but from 1935 onwards he left figuration behind and developed his own abstract, painterly idiom. The viewer will always be able to develop a relationship with this because it is based on the harmonious interaction of understandable shapes and corresponding color arrangements.
Poliakoff's “typical” works consist of irregular, puzzle-like interlocking image elements. The image derives its effect from the pure materiality of the colors and their play with luminosity, transparency and opacity. Poliakoff's Russian background - he was a great fan of icon painting - and his intense relationship with music and especially rhythm, have had a strong impact on his oeuvre. Poliakoff's success is based very much on the harmony of his compositions, in color, form and sound. These compositions of color sounds find their equivalent in music and are filled with an almost sacred harmony.
There is no chronological development in Poliakoff's color values. At any time we find darker or lighter earth tones parallel to strong and bright colors. He was taught the emotional values of colors by Robert Delaunay, and so this is hardly surprising. His use of color fluctuates with his moods a doorway into the artist's psyche.
There is no chronological development in Poliakoff's color values. At any time we find darker or lighter earth tones parallel to strong and bright colors. He was taught the emotional values of colors by Robert Delaunay, and so this is hardly surprising. His use of color fluctuates with his moods a doorway into the artist's psyche.
His painting includes variations of shapes and textures, cut out and nested within each other, refined through intuitive and skilful placement.

Exhibitions
Museum and single exhibitions (selection)
2021
Serge Poliakoff: Gouaches 1938 - 1969Cheim & Read, New York City, United States
2019
Serge Poliakoff - Radierungen und Lithographien, Galerie Werner Bommer, Zurich, Switzerland
2016
Serge Poliakoff, Cheim & Read, New York City, United States
2015
Serge Ploiakoff - Silent Paintings, Timothy Taylor, London, United Kingdom
2013
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
2006
Jan Jordens Groninger Museum, Groningen
2003/04
Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
1997
Museum Würth, Künzelsau
1996
Musée Maillol, Paris; Hachmeister Galerie, Münster
1966
Rerospektive Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
1965
Biennale Tokyo: Internationaler Preis
1959
und 64 documenta 2 und 3, Kassel
1963
Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover
1962 Biennale Venedig