SERGE POLIAKOFF (1900-1969)

Painted in 1966, during a period of international acclaim for the artist, Composition abstraite is a luminous example of Serge Poliakoff’s mature abstract language. Two fields of warm yellow and vivid red embrace at the centre of the canvas. Each is formed of its own interlocking zones of delicately nuanced tone, which tesselate as if collaged together; orange-blushed shapes in the yellow half echo the red, which glows richly in shades ranging from vermillion to mauve.

During the late 1950s, Poliakoff had begun to reduce his compositions to just two or three hues, allowing him to focus more clearly on the sonorous interactions between them. Whilst many of his works during the 1960s gravitated towards a more subdued palette, the present work retains the jewel-like clarity of his earlier compositions, offering a pure, lyrical celebration of colour at its most concentrated.

Born in Moscow, Poliakoff fled Russia after the 1917 revolution, settling in Paris where he studied painting with Othon Friesz: a former Fauve who perhaps inspired the artist’s burgeoning interest in the materiality of colour. While in Paris, Poliakoff befriended Wassily Kandinsky and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, whose works would have a visible impact upon his practice. The luminous colours of religious icons he experienced as a child, too, loomed large in his imagination, endowing his works with a serene, contemplative quality.

Broadly associated with Tachisme and Art Informel, Poliakoff garnered critical acclaim that came to a head in the mid-1960s, culminating in his first major retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London in 1963 and his receipt of the International Award at the Tokyo Biennial in 1965. Amid this triumph, however, his paintings retained the quiet sense of stillness and poise that lay at the heart of his practice. As Poliakoff explained, ‘a form should be listened to when it is seen’ (S. Poliakoff, quoted in Poliakoff, exh. cat. Galerie Melki, Paris 1975, p. 13).