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Lot Essay
Serge Poliakoff’s Rouge bleu gris et lie-de vin (Red blue grey and claret) (1964) locks together with a compositional harmony and chromatic brilliance typical of the artist. A dedicated student of colour theory, here the painter’s thoughtfulness and sensitivity to tonal relationships is clear to see; while four jagged blocks of incandescent red and a glimmering white immediately draw the eye to the centre of the canvas, these reds are both intensified and stabilised by the fields of serene blue at the painting’s sides and the darker, winey purple patches that sit broodingly along its top and bottom edges. Between these slabs of rich, full colour, the artist sculpts larger areas of transitional blue-greys and blood-red rendered in shorter, textured brushstrokes; these sit deeper within the composition, generating an inviting sense of depth and layer. There is a controlled energy to the work: Poliakoff frames his colours with a considered compositional sophistication, his forms arranged around a strong vertical axis into a loosely symmetrical system, undergirding the painting with a feeling of stability and resolution while allowing his forms an easy, organic freedom. This suggestion of subtle motion combines with the work’s sharply lineated forms and the outward radiance of Poliakoff’s colours to evoke the intimate luminosity of stained glass windows.
Born in Russia, Poliakoff moved to Paris in 1923, and began painting towards the end of the 1920s, having spent years as a travelling musician. However, it was not until the end of the following decade that the artist’s career began in earnest; befriending Kandinsky, as well as Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Poliakoff began to experiment with abstract styles that took influence from their theories of colour and form, as the wave of Art Informel abstract painting began to gain momentum in Paris through the 1940s. By the 1950s, Poliakoff had developed his distinctive abstract idiom, its wonderful use of colour and sharply structured formal concord forming one of the period’s most iconic examples of Tachisme. By 1964, when Rouge bleu gris et lie-de-vin was painted, the artist had ascended to become one of the most celebrated painters of his generation, having had a room dedicated entirely to his work in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1962, received the Order of ‘Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres’, and enjoyed his first major retrospective, at The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1963. A work of measured elegance and beautifully understated painterly skill, Rouge bleu gris et lie-de-vin reflects a painter who had truly mastered his style.
Born in Russia, Poliakoff moved to Paris in 1923, and began painting towards the end of the 1920s, having spent years as a travelling musician. However, it was not until the end of the following decade that the artist’s career began in earnest; befriending Kandinsky, as well as Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Poliakoff began to experiment with abstract styles that took influence from their theories of colour and form, as the wave of Art Informel abstract painting began to gain momentum in Paris through the 1940s. By the 1950s, Poliakoff had developed his distinctive abstract idiom, its wonderful use of colour and sharply structured formal concord forming one of the period’s most iconic examples of Tachisme. By 1964, when Rouge bleu gris et lie-de-vin was painted, the artist had ascended to become one of the most celebrated painters of his generation, having had a room dedicated entirely to his work in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1962, received the Order of ‘Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres’, and enjoyed his first major retrospective, at The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1963. A work of measured elegance and beautifully understated painterly skill, Rouge bleu gris et lie-de-vin reflects a painter who had truly mastered his style.