André Lanskoy

Galerie Louis Carré, Paris
Galerie Prazan-Fitoussi, Paris

St.Petersburg, State Russian Museum, Russkii Parizh, 28 April - 21 July 2003
Koblenz, Ludwig Museum, Treffpunk Paris, 5 September - 23 November 2003

Russkii Parizh, exhibition catalogue, St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2003, p.37 (illustrated)

Original canvas. There is some light surface dirt and very minor flakes of paint loss in places. UV light reveals no signs of retouching. Held in a painted wood frame and unexamined out of frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The son of a Russian count, Lanskoy grew up in St Petersburg and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In the early stages of his career he was strongly influenced by Sergei Sudeikin and Chaïm Soutine, but in the late 1930s he moved away from figurative and Impressionistic painting to concentrate on the style of abstract painting known as Tachism (derived from the French word tache – a stain). Often defined as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism, Lanskoy and his close friend Nicholas de Staël were pioneers of this movement which was born in a response to Cubism and is characterised by spontaneous brushwork and brash, vivid colours. Lanskoy's fame took off during the 1950's: he exhibited at Fine Art Associates in New York in 1956, in documenta II in Germany in 1958 and in the exhibition "Les peintres russes de l'école de Paris" at the museum of Saint Denis in 1960. With its live patches of colour and thick impasto, the offered work from the end of this decade is a superb example of the style that established his international reputation.