Serge Poliakoff

SERGE POLIAKOFF (Moscow, 1900 – Paris, 1969).
“Composition in Red, Carmine, and Yellow,” 1958.
Color lithograph on BFK Rives paper, print no. 20/125.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Published by Nesto Jacometti, L’Œuvre Gravée, Zurich.
Printed by Jean Pons, Paris.
Bibliography: Alexis Poliakoff and Gérard Schneider, *Serge Poliakoff: Graphik – Estampes – Prints*, Edition Galerie Française, Munich, 1998, no. 19.
Measurements: 64 x 49 cm.

Created in 1958, at a time when Serge Poliakoff was firmly established on the international scene, this lithograph translates into the medium of printmaking the artistic language that had made the artist one of the leading figures of abstraction within the School of Paris. The composition is built from irregular chromatic fields that interlock and balance one another without resorting to rigid geometry: for Poliakoff, the relationship between form and color was the true structural principle of the image.

The lithographic medium allows him to preserve much of the painterly quality of his work, especially the layering of tones and variations in density within each surface. The yellow functions as a luminous focal point amid more restrained masses of red and carmine, articulating a composition in which no form acts in isolation, but rather in a relationship of tension and balance with the others.

Serge Poliakoff, born in Moscow and based in Paris since 1923, was a central figure in postwar European abstraction. His contact with Kandinsky and with Robert and Sonia Delaunay proved decisive in defining his own artistic language based on the interaction of fields of color. In 1947 he received the Kandinsky Prize, and in 1962 his work featured prominently at the Venice Biennale, where he represented France. The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris considers him one of the leading figures of the Parisian art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. His work is included in collections such as those of MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.