The Life and Origins of André Lanskoy

André Lanskoy was born in Moscow on 31 March 1902. His early years were marked by movement across the Russian landscape. Following 1905, his family relocated to St. Petersburg, eventually settling in the capital in 1909. By 1918, he had moved to Kiev, a city where he began to produce his first paintings. These early works emerged during a period of significant upheaval, as he found himself fighting in the White Army during the Russian Civil War.

The chaos of the war left him with an injury, which prompted a move to Constantinople. This displacement was a precursor to a permanent change in his life. In 1921, he traveled to Paris. He arrived in the French capital with a singular focus, noting that he began to paint immediately upon his arrival and did not stop for the rest of his life. This move from the East to France would define the remainder of his career as a painter and printmaker.

Artistic Development and Paris Years

Upon arriving in Paris in 1921, the impulse to paint was immediate and constant. The city became a place of meeting and shared observation. He moved through circles that included Serge Poliakoff, Jean-Michel Coulon, and later Nicolas de Staël. It was also in Paris that he met Catherine Zoubtchenko, who became his lover and his muse. His eyes often turned toward the way James Ensor and Vincent van Gogh handled color, seeking a similar weight and presence in his own work.

The early years in France were marked by a steady presence in the local gallery scene. In 1923, he was part of the first group exhibitions of Russian painters at the La Licorne Gallery. By 1924, his work caught the attention of collectors at the Salon d'Automne. This period of visibility led to a solo exhibition in 1925, after which his paintings began to find their way into museums and the hands of private collectors.

Transition Toward Abstraction and Style

A shift began to take hold in his work after 1937. He turned his attention toward the studies of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, moving away from his earlier modes of expression. By 1942, the transition was complete, and he painted only abstract works from that point forward. This period saw him become associated with the School of Paris and Tachisme, an abstract movement that emerged during the 1940s. His practice also aligned with the Nouvelle École de Paris and the principles of lyrical abstraction.

The core of his practice became the tension between form and color. He viewed the brushstroke as a transformed reality that only found its true meaning when placed within the context of surrounding shades. This interaction of color and shape became the central theme of his entire body of work. He focused on how pictorial matter and color could establish the foundations of his aesthetic, seeking a specific kind of repetition in his stylistic and iconographic choices.

Later Projects and Major Exhibitions

In 1962, Lanskoy began a long, fourteen-year engagement with the text of Nikolai Gogol’s novel, Diary of a Madman. This project moved away from the canvas into the realm of original prints and collages. He worked on these pieces until his death, eventually producing a collection that included 150 collages and 80 lithographs inspired by the writing.

His presence in the Parisian art scene continued through the mid-1960s. In 1966, he had an exhibition at the Museé Galliéra in Paris. A few years later, in 1969, the Neue Galerie in Zürich held an exhibition of his work. Even after he was gone, his output remained a subject of interest; the Aras Gallery staged a major posthumous exhibition in 1989 to display the extensive series of prints and collages from the Gogol project.