SERGE POLIAKOFF (1900-1969)

Painted in 1952, Serge Poliakoff’s Rouge is striking, revealing the nascent traces of what would become an enduring commitment to colour’s materiality. Comprising two interlocking red forms, the painting’s chromatic opulence interrupted by a single gold triangle. Born in Moscow, Poliakoff fled Russia after the 1917 revolution, eventually settling in Paris where he studied under Othon Friesz, the former Fauvist who perhaps nurtured the young artist’s awareness of colour; Poliakoff’s ensuing friendship with Robert and Sonia Delaunay further confirmed this. Rouge marks the beginning of Poliakoff’s meteoric rise: 1952 was the year of  his first solo exhibitions abroad at the Tokanten Gallery in Copenhagen and New York’s Circle and Square Gallery. It was also when he discovered two paintings by Malevich at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. The encounter proved to be an aesthetic revelation, inspiring Poliakoff to reduce his visual vocabulary as a means of intensifying the relationship between colour and form. Like the Russian Suprematist, Poliakoff too strove to create a sublime, palpable sense of energy rooted in the pictorial plane. ‘When a painting is silent, it means that it is successful. Some of my works are born in a tumult they are explosive. But I am satisfied only when they get silent. The form should be heard and not be seen’ (S. Poliakoff quoted in M. Ragon, Le regard et la mémoire, Paris 1956, p. 56).