Serge Poliakoff : Le suprême peintre de l`abstraction

Forty years after his death, Lorenzelli Arte celebrates Russian-born French artist Serge Poliakoff, with whom the gallery has had an ongoing relationship since the early 1960s. 

Lorenzelli is the only gallery to repeatedly bring Poliakoff's work to Italy. The first Serge Poliakoff exhibition curated by the Gallery was held ni Bergamo in December of 1970, one year after Poliakoff's death. A subsequent exhibition was produced in Milan in 1982 at the Via Sant'Andrea. 

This exhibition will be open to the public on November 20. The title comes from a statement made by Poliakoff's friend Kandinskji-and shared by most of contemporary critics- and will feature works created between 1952 and 1968, many of which are owned by the gallery, having been purchased directly from the artist, though the show will also include several works from important private collections. 

The thirty works exhibited will mainly consist of oils, tempera and an interesting set of ceramics made during what is considered the artists' best period, beginning in the fifties and through the sixties when he ignored the influences of post-Cubism, fundamental in French visual culture, as he tried defining idea of space, built from a series of unusual components. Poliakoff began with abstraction in late 1930s, but after the war his style gradually shifted to focus on defining layers of color with irregular shapes embedded inside each other and creating clean but vibrant juxtapositions that give the impression of depth. 

Readily recognized as one of the most original modern abstractionists, Serge Poliakoff was able to define his painting with a unique style that is equidistant from the strict geometry-which he considered too cold-and gestural improvisation, so dear to his contemporaries, defining its layered backgrounds on the canvas with rigor and sensuality inherited from his culture-derived and evocative of the tradition of ancient Russian icons. 

The exhibition represents a rare opportunity to see, up-close, works from his stage that made him so famous in the international art scene. For the occasion we will have, as usual, a published catalog with color reproductions of all works and full-bibliographical information. The catalog will be available in the gallery.