Serge Poliakoff

The Russian artist Serge Poliakoff was a Russian painter, graphic artist, stage designer and illustrator who is considered an important representative of the Nouvelle École de Paris. His style is drawn from the Parisian avant-garde, especially from Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky and Otto Freundlich. Around 1938, Poliakoff turned to abstraction and painted two-dimensional pictures with sharply contrasting colors, sometimes also in monochrome. His constructivist-ornamental pictures combine functionality and architecture.

born 1900 in Moscow; died 1969 in Paris
1917 Escape from the Russian Revolution to Constantinople
1923 Arrival in Paris
from 1929 studied painting at the Paris academies Forchot and de la Grande Chaumière.
1935-1937 moved to the Slade School of Art in London.
after 1935 he finds his way to abstraction and uses color as color without figurative references.
In the 1940s it remained in the grey-brown color range
from 1950 extension of the color scale to include bright, contrasting tones.

Exhibitions (selection)

2015 Timothy Tylor Gallery London
2008 Musee des Beaux Arts Lyon
2004 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
1999 Art Museum Linz
1992 Indianapolis Museum of Art
1990 Venice Biennale
1981 Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal
1975 Museum of Fine Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds
1964 documenta 3, Kassel
1958 Stades Museum for Art, Copenhagen
1953 Guggenheim Museum, New York
1952 Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
1947 Gallery Denise René, Paris

Collections (Selection)

Pinakothek der Moderne Munich