Serge Poliakoff - Russian (1900-1969)

One of the most important painters of his generation, Serge Georgievich Poliakoff was renowned for his interlocking, jigsaw-like arrangements of bold colors in non-figurative compositions. Fascinated from a young age by the vivid colors and contemplative power of Orthodox icons, the Russian-born modernist was initially academic in style, until his twin discovery of the luminosity of Egyptian sarcophagi, as well as the abstract works of Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Freundlich, and Sonia and Robert Delaunay. Shunning excessively geometric lines and forms, his canvases probed the asymmetrical qualities usually associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Informalism, and Tachism. In the first years after WWII, he created the poèmes plastiques (plastic poems) series, canvases whereon superimposed colors are corralled in linear shapes, with tints moderated by texture and his experiments with monochromatism in painting. “The painting should be monumental,” he famously stated, “that is to say, larger than its dimensions.”