SERGE POLIAKOFF | Composition Murale

Galerie de France, Paris
Galerie im Erker, St. Gallen
Private Collection, Switzerland 
Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, 17 June 2011, Lot 155
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Reims, Maison de la Culture de André Malraux, Serge Poliakoff, May - July 1971, n.p., no. 20, illustrated in colour (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Milano, Centro Rizzoli, Serge Poliakoff, February - March 1972 (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Lisbon, Galeria S. Mamède, Poliakoff, November - December 1972, n.p., no. 1-9, illustrated (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Rome, Galleria Editalia, Serge Poliakoff, October - November 1973 (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Tehran, Centre International des Arts, 1er Salon International des Arts AFAA, March 1975 (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Hovikodden, Sonja Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Poliakoff, February - March 1976, n.p., no. 59-67, illustrated (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
St. Gallen, Galerie im Erker, Serge Poliakoff, June - October 1996

Giuseppe Marchiori, 'Serge Poliakoff', Les Presses de La Connaissance, 1976, p. 7, illustrated (as part of Le Mur de Reims, in installation with the artist and Giuseppe Marchiori)
Exh. Cat., Paris, Galerie Pixi, Serge Poliakoff Intime, May - July 1994, p. 13, illustrated in colour (in installation in the the artist's apartment)
Marie Victoire Poliakoff, Serge Poliakoff mon Grand-Père, Paris 2011, p. 212, illustrated (as part of Le Mur de Reims)
Alexis Poliakoff, Serge Poliakoff, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume V, 1966-1969, Paris 2016, p. 90, no. 66-34, illustrated in colour and p. 103, illustrated in colour (as part of Le Mur de Reims)

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some minor wear to all four extreme edges and all four corner tips, with some associated minute spots of fraying in isolated places. Very close inspection in raking light reveals a few tiny and faint rub marks to the black pigment in the centre left of the composition and a short and superficial scratch to the centre of the lower edge. There is some light canvas draw to the top two corners, with some associated burnishing. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Created in 1966, Composition Murale exemplifies Serge Poliakoff’s unparalleled ability to marry shape, colour, and texture, into an organic abstract whole. Held in extraordinarily high esteem by the artist, the present work forms part of an iconic nine part polyptych, Le Mur de Reims, which was illustriously shown and widely photographed in Poliakoff’s own living room before being shown on the global stage. Each panel in this extraordinary multi-part work draws on a rich iconoclastic Russian tradition, whereby each panel has an illusionistic frame painted around a central image, endowing each work with a certain gravitas. Executed with visibly precise brushstrokes, sparingly applied so as to reveal glimpses of ground beneath, Composition Murale appears as a harmonious melange of chromatic passages. Its sophistication and elegance speak volumes of the artist’s ability in design, whilst its mood of serene grace reminds us of Poliakoff’s own criteria for a successful painting: “When a picture is silent, it means it is all right. Some of my paintings start making an infernal din. They are explosive. But I am not satisfied until they have become silent. A form must be listened to, not seen” (Serge Poliakoff cited in: Michel Ragon (trans. Rita Barisse), Poliakoff, Paris 1958, p. 36). Having fled the Russian Revolution in 1917, Poliakoff began training in art in Paris as early as 1923, at prestigious institutions like the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. However, it wasn’t until he relocated to London, to study at the Slade School of Art in 1935, that the artist was introduced to abstraction proper. Upon his return to Paris, his compatriot Wassily Kandinsky was a formative influence, who showed Poliakoff the dramatic potential of colour as a compositional tool, rather than mere ornament. Meanwhile, Sonia and Robert Delaunay showed Poliakoff how colour could work as emotion; how deploying some hues in harmonious combination, and others in dissonant juxtaposition, could imbue a work with mood as well as endow it with aesthetic. Poliakoff took up the mantle of these first-generation abstractionists with vigour; their precedent bloomed in his praxis, and he rapidly attained global critical acclaim. In 1952, Poliakoff discovered the purified Cubo-Futuristic art of the great Russian Modernist, Kasimir Malevich. Malevich’s pioneering Suprematist compositions and minimal palette inspired Poliakoff to reduce his pictorial vocabulary and thus intensify his abstract design of interconnecting hues and tones. Composition Murale comes from a period where all of Poliakoff’s endeavours in this regard had reached their highest point. It is a truly outstanding example displaying a maturity of form, colour, and compositional balance entirely representative of an artist operating at the peak of his executive powers.

From a historiographic point of view, it is best to view Poliakoff as the European counterpart to the American Abstraction Expressionists. Although both parties eschewed figurative modes of depiction entirely, and created works in absolute rejection of illusionistic space, their subsequent paintings were entirely different in mood. Where the works of Jackson Pollock are brash and haphazard in composition, with pigment splurged at random, Poliakoff presents works of abstract exactitude, each colour a considered homonym at complete ease with its surroundings. Where Willem de Kooning’s paintings seem loud and dissonant – jarring, almost violent in their machismo depictions – works like Composition Murale are exercises in crystallising grace and unimpeachable serenity. Poliakoff should be considered a worthy peer of his American contemporaries; as technically proficient in painting, as contextually relevant in his adoption of art-historical precedent, and as steadfast and resolute in adherence to his stylistic goals. The present work exists as testament to the enduring power and relevance of his oeuvre.