Paris, France — The lyrical and the sacred are being played out in the elegant gallery district of the Golden Triangle in Paris where the Almine Rech gallery is hosting a show devoted to the great modernist painter Serge Poliakoff. The Russian-born French painter was a key player in the Paris School and the abstract movements. The exhibition aims to explore the influence of the sacred in the work of the artist who represented France at the 1962 Venice Biennale. Entitled Serge Poliakoff, Image Divine, the show takes a look at the last 20 years of his work— he died in 1969 — with the dominant theme being the development of the liturgical aspect of the artist’s work. Treasures from the artist’s library are on exhibition in addition to his paintings. 

« 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 a spiritualist nature, which unexpectedly connects him to abstractionism and thus to the work of Kandinsky, » explains Russian art historian and curator Dr. Dimitri Ozerkov. Until October 5th. 18 avenue Matignon Paris, France 75008. https://www.alminerech.com/