SERGE POLIAKOFF

This exhibition will explore the influence of the sacred in the work of the celebrated French artist who represented France at the 1962 Venice Biennale.

Based on Poliakoff’s diary entries, the exhibition looks at the last twenty years of his work as a preservation of the spiritual link between contemporary art and the Old Masters. There are direct parallels between his paintings and the compositions of Giotto and Fra Angelico, which allowed Poliakoff to reflect on the nature of pictorial composition itself.

The dominant theme of the exhibition is the development of the liturgical aspect of the artist’s work, from Icône (1949) to his unfinished 1969 work based on Andrei Rublev’s Trinity. Poliakoff’s abstract art is revealed to be of spiritualist nature, which unexpectedly connects him to abstractionism and thus to the work of Kandinsky.

In the context of Poliakoff’s abstract compositions, which are ‘domestic in their scale—but not in their vision’ according to Sean Scully, his personal icon, which has never been published, will be featured, as well as the treasures of his library.

— Dr. Dimitri Ozerkov