Rouge monochrome

Details

With illegible customs stamp on the reverse on the stretcher. Poliakoff 60-52. Provenance: Galerie Mony Calatchi, Paris; private collection, Cologne; private collection, Munich.

Description

• Imposing monochrome composition
• Lively structure created with finely nuanced colours and visible brushstrokes
• Concentrated quintessence of Poliakoff’s abstraction at the height of his career In this painting, Serge Poliakoff appears to deliberately eschew both a broad colour palette and the polygonal shapes typical of many of his works – at least at first glance.
But upon closer inspection, many fine nuances become apparent in the colours, which initially appear monochrome, and delicate hints of individual geometric forms become apparent in the multi-layered, pastose surface of the paint. Poliakoff thus achieves a unique, meditative effect that is so characteristic of his painting. Poliakoff’s “(…) pictures grow inwards, not outwards. This applies not only to the structure, to the organism of the picture, but also to the dimension of this art. It is abstract, it distances itself from nature because it is nature itself, but without any association with the objective world. With the progressive purification of the image’s content, the calming of the forms, the greater economy, simplicity and reduction of the colouring up to the restrained richness of the monochrome, its spiritual content, its seriousness, and its piety also grows. These images do not refer to anything that lies outside of them, they are not signs, but they invite you to immerse yourself in them for meditation. They are open.” (Wieland Schmied, in: exhibition cat. Serge Poliakoff, Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover, cat. 5, 1963, p. 10). From 1935 onwards, Poliakoff gradually found his way to purely abstract forms and shapes in his painting. In doing so, he left behind his early figurative work based on classical academic training. From then on he increasingly used pure colour without any representational references. Poliakoff received key inspiration from Kandinsky, whom he met in Paris, the artist couple Delaunay and also from the sculptor Otto Freundlich. Despite these dominant influences, Poliakoff quickly developed a very individual and distinctive form of abstract painting. Initially his colour fields were in a somewhat more muted grey-brown tones, but from the 1950s onwards his palette brightened significantly.