André Lanskoy was a Russian painter and printmaker who worked in France. His work is strongly associated with Tachisme, a French movement characterized by large, brightly colored compositions created through the filling in of abstract linear forms.
Background
André Lanskoy was born on March 31, 1902, in Moscow, Russian Federation. He was the son of the Count Mikhail Sergeevich Lanskoy — a favored courtier of Catherine the Great. When Lanskoy was three years old, the family moved to Saint Petersburg.
Education
In Saint Petersburg, Lanskoy attended the Academy of Fine Arts until the outbreak of the Russian Civil War in 1919. As a royalist, he volunteered to serve in the Tsar’s White Army but was injured in battle within months, and subsequently exiled when the revolution succeeded. In 1921 he reached France and studied at the famously progressive Académie de la Grande Chaumière, painting portraits and still lifes in vivid colors with thick applications of paint.
Career
In 1922, Andre Lanskoy was introduced to countrymen Chaime Soutine and Konstantin Terechkovitch, with whom he participated in a group exhibition of Russian artists at the Galerie La Licorne the following year. The show, which was an enormous success, led to an invitation to present his work at the Galerie Carmine with Robert Delaunay, Leopold Survage and Ossip Zadkine.
Lanskoy’s contributions were accepted into the Salon d’Automne in 1924, where his paintings caught the attention of German collector Wilhelm Uhde, who became a long-term patron by acquiring his entire output for the next two years. As his benefactor, Uhde introduced him to the owners of Galerie Bing on the rue La Boetie with whom he signed a two-year contract and mounted his first solo exhibition in 1925.
By 1937 Lanskoy had given up figurative painting and began fully painting abstracts. During this time he became friends with Nicolas de Stael and the two held an exhibition in 1948. He subsequently exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Associates, documenta II and the Les Peintres Russes de l'ecole de Paris at the museum of Saint Denis.
In 1962, Lanskoy accepted an offer to create a set of original prints to supplement the publication of Nikolai Gogol’s "Diary of a Madman". The project continued for over a decade, resulting in 80 lithographs and 150 collages.
Lanskoy did not retire from the art until his death, exhibiting frequently in Paris and Switzerland until 1969.