Serge Poliakoff

Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, Paris
Galerie Ariel, Paris
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Salon de Mai, 1954
Saõ Paulo, Musée d'Arte Moderne, III Biennale, 1955
Hamburg, Kunstverein, Serge Poliakoff, 1958, no. 39
Copenhagen, Statens Museum fur Kunst, Serge Poliakoff, 1958, no. 34
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Serge Poliakoff, 1970, p. 59, no. 39, illustrated in colour
Hovikodden, Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Bilder fra Inger og Andreas L. Riis Samling, 1986, no. 2
Hovikodden, Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Paris - Oslo, 1991, illustrated on the cover in colour

Galerie, no. 97, October 1970, p. 14, illustrated
Alexis Poliakoff, Serge Poliakoff, Catalogue Raisonné Volume I, 1922-1954, Paris 2004, p. 482, no. 54-05, illustrated in colour; Monographie, p. 107, no. 93, illustrated in colour

To be offered across the Contemporary Art Evening and Day sales, the homogenous group of works assembled in this Important Private Scandinavian Collection reunites some of the undisputed titans of the Post-War European avant-garde. Each in their own, idiosyncratic way Serge Poliakoff, Mariá-Helena Vieira da Silva, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky and Corneille set the tenor and legitimacy of Ecole de Paris abstraction and Cobra modes of figurative expression, irrevocably altering the pace and direction of twentieth-century art.

Offered in the Evening sale, Poliakoff’s Verte au Cercle Rouge is the epitome of his declared aim of achieving Le Silence Complet – the stilling of commotion achieved by the harmonious balance between colour, form and proportion. While expressing the same concern for balance, Vieira da Silva’s Les Chemins IV adopts an alternative mode of abstraction: in contrast to Poliakoff’s solid, inscrutable, interlocking forms, Vieira da Silva’s linear abstraction, derived from architectural study, dematerialises space and perspective.