Lot 530
  • 530

Michel Kikoïne

Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 GBP
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Description

  • Michel Kikoïne
  • still life of flowers
  • signed in Latin l.l.
  • oil on canvas
  • 61 by 49.5cm., 24 by 19 1/2 in.

Condition

Original canvas. There is a layer of surface dirt and discoloured varnish and there is some light abrasion along the edges, possibly corresponding with rubbing against a previous frame. UV light reveals a few spots of retouching in places. Held in a painted moulded plaster frame with some losses. Unexamined out of frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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."

Catalogue Note

Michel Kikoine and Chaim Soutine met in their early teenage years at a drawing school in Minsk and became lifelong friends. When Kikoine was sixteen, he and Soutine continued their studies in Vilnius whilst working together as retouchers in a photographic studio. Their close friend and fellow Jewish artist, Pinchus Kremegne, soon became the victim of pogroms and fled to Paris in 1912; Kikoine followed a few months later and Soutine soon joined. Kikoine enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and met the luminaries of the avant-garde of Montparnasse, including his compatriots, Marc Chagall and Simon Segal. He had his first exhibition in Paris in 1919 after which he exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne.

Still Life with Flowers is believed to have been executed in the late 1910s or early 1920s and is a brilliant and revealing example of the mutual influences of Kikoine and Soutine on each other's work. Soutine's Bunch of Red Gladioli (1919) and Still Life with flowers (1920) also depict a vibrant subject against a pitch background, though in the offered work by Kikoine, it is the pull and surge of the warped stems and blossom which wrenches control of the composition that is so redolent of Soutine's work of this period – the urge which drags the forms up to the picture plane, a plasticity which impacts every element of the flowers and leaves as they flow one into another. Both artists demanded a maximum of intensity from every element of his medium – the brushstroke, the pigment, the colour. In Soutine's words "L'expression est dans la touche du pinceau" (cited in Pierre Courthioni, Soutine, Peintre du déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, p.148).