Léopold SURVAGE (Moscou 1879-Paris 1968)

Landscape in Nice, 1926 Oil on canvas 50 x 61 cm Signed and dated lower right "Survage 26 On the back on the stretcher, the old label with the handwritten indications "N20 Paysage Survage" Leopold Frederic Leopoldovich Survage Sturzwage, known as Leopold Survage, was a painter, poet and draftsman born in Moscow. From 1899, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Moscow under Constantin Korovine and Leonid Pasternak. He rubbed shoulders with painters Michel Larionov and David Bourliouk and discovered the private collection of Mr. Chtchoukine, where he discovered the work of Henri Matisse and Cézanne. He actively participated in the artistic life of his time, presenting his work at the "Stephanos" exhibition in 1907-1908 and the "Jack of Diamonds" exhibition in 1910-1911. Léopold Survage arrived in Paris in 1908. He enrolled at the Académie Matisse and the Académie Colarossi before becoming close to the Cubist and Surrealist painters without joining these movements. The artist frequented the artistic and literary figures of Montparnasse, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Fernand Léger, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars and Modigliani as well as the Baroness of Oettingen with whom he had a relationship. In 1912, the painter produced his Rythmes colorés, which announced a turning point in his art, and placed him among the creators of abstraction with Delaunay, Mondrian, Malevitch and Kupka. Léopold Survage left for the Côte d'Azur at the beginning of the war, not mobilized for health reasons. He captured the light of the South, expanding his palette of vibrant colors, and created imaginary works, tending towards surrealism. The artist, back in Paris in 1919, changed the tone of his painting, favoring gray and brown tints enhanced with greens and reds. He is the founder, with Alexander Archipenko and Albert Gleizes, of the second Golden Section. From 1922 onwards, Survage produced numerous decorative paintings and frescoes, notably for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, for the Palais des Congrès in Liège, and for the railway pavilion for which he received a gold medal in 1937. The painter was named Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1953 and participated in the Venice Biennale the following year. He died in Paris in 1968 and was buried in the Bois Tardieu cemetery in Clamart. He exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants (1911, 1914), at the Salon d'Automne and in Parisian galleries: Galerie Bongard (1917), Galerie de l'Effort Moderne (1921), Berthe Weill (1922); as well as abroad: in Italy (exhibition of the Golden Section in Rome, 1922), in Chicago (Chester Johnson Galleries, 1927). The work presented here is a poetic representation of the city of Nice. Leopold Survage is inspired by both cubism and surrealism to give life to a schematic urban landscape that emerges from a sandy earth and pierces the linearity of the sky. Bibliography : X. Muratova "Unknown Russia. Russian art of the first half of the twentieth century", SilvanaEditoriale, Milan, 2015, ill. 104 page 140