André Lanskoy - Les Noirs gagnent - image-1

Lot 293 D

André Lanskoy - Les Noirs gagnent

Auction 1134 - overview Cologne
31.05.2019, 17:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 50.000 € - 70.000 €
Result: 93.000 € (incl. premium)

André Lanskoy

Les Noirs gagnent
1958

Oil on canvas 98 x 146.5 cm Framed. Signed 'LANSKOY' in violet lower right and titled and dated 'Les Noirs gagnent 58' in black chalk verso. - Unobtrusive craquelure in few pastose areas.

Andrei Mikhailovich Lanskoy was born in Moscow in 1902; he arrived in Paris in 1921, after stops at various points along the way, and he would live and work there until the end of his life. While studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Lanskoy was inspired by the still life, interior and portrait paintings of Henri Matisse, Chaim Soutine and, not least, Amadeo Modigliani. Collectors like the “marchand-amateur” Wilhelm Uhde or the industrialist Roger Dutilleul discovered Lanskoy and aided him as patrons; his friendships with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Léopold Survage and Ossip Zadkine or, later, Nicolas de Staël cemented his significance in the Parisian art scene.
It was not until 1938 that Lanskoy began to paint abstract works: in the summer of 1937, the exhibition “Origines et développement de l'art international indépendant” at the Musée Jeu de Paume presented a cross section extending from the painting of Cézanne to non-figurative painting, and the painter was captivated. He was particularly fascinated by the works of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
His relationship with the gallery of Louis Carré began in 1944 and helped advance his fame. There he competed with the artists of the École de Paris and his work was soon also exhibited with the Réalités Nouvelles in New York, among other places.
His compositions increasingly took geometric forms as their subject matter and are filled with life through dynamic structures and emphatic rhythms. Between bold and muted reds and blues mixed with white, strong colours alternate with a reserved green. They are joined by a black that provides form and structure and is interspersed with a moderating grey. The free play of the black lines holds the individual fields of colour together and establishes an informal network extending across the canvas like the blood vessels of a body. Lanskoy increasingly displays an aesthetic of painterly subtlety and lyricism in his compositions of the 1950s, and with his “paysagisme abstrait” he was able to make a place for himself alongside the works of Jean-Paul Riopelle or Georges Mathieu as a representative of French Art Informel. This was also acknowledged by Werner Haftmann, art historical director of documenta I-III, who invited Lanskoy to Kassel in 1959 and 1964, for the second and third exhibitions.

Provenance

Arist's studio; Galerie Raymonde Cazenave, Paris, 1959 (label verso on stretcher); Galerie Dorothea Leonhart, Munich, 1962 (label verso on stretcher); Private possession, South Germany

Exhibitions

Paris 1959 (Galerie Cazenave), Lanskoy. Peintures 1947-1958, cat. no. 14, with illus.; Munich 1962 (Galerie Dorothea Leonhart and Galerie Raymonde Cazenave, Paris), Ölbilder und Gouachen, cat. no. 12 with colour illus.