Léopold Survage (1879-1968) - La Rue Du Village

Léopold SURVAGE (1879-1968) The village street Oil on canvas Dimensions of the painting: 50 x 61 cm Signed lower right Provenance: Private collection in Normandy. Oil on canvas in good condition. Small old restoration. Old frame with some chips FREE Dimensions with frame: 63 x 74 cm Sold with invoice and certificate of authenticity. Léopold Sturzwage, known as Léopold Survage, was born in Moscow (Russia) in 1879. He apprenticed in a piano factory. In 1901, he began to receive artistic education at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts (1901-1906), meeting Larionov and Malevich there. Léopold Survage participated in the Russian avant-garde exhibitions “Stephanos” (1907) and “Jack of Diamonds” in 1910. He moved to Paris in 1908 where, while painting, he was a piano tuner until 1915. His pictorial world prefigures the surrealist universe and enthuses Apollinaire. After a period of experimentation where he was interested in the rules of Cézanne construction and Cubism, he painted abstract watercolors which he called "Colored Rhythms" and which he planned to put one after the other in front of a camera in order to create a “pictorial symphony”, equal to music. This project, with the outbreak of war, will never see the light of day. His first personal exhibition was organized in Paris during the First World War (1917). Survage paints very colorful canvases, figurative and symbolic compositions, where he abolishes the rules of traditional perspective; the characters are schematized and, most often, located in an urban environment. He will be a founding member of the Golden Section (Gleizes, Archipenko, etc.). From 1919 to 1929, Survage developed his work on the themes of the city and its inhabitants, which are marked by obvious links to Cubism. He created sets and costumes for the Diaghilev Russian ballets (1922). Léopold Survage obtained French nationality in 1927. The artist now painted figures in the foreground of his canvases, his palette darkened; From the 1930s onwards, he used a casein emulsion to paint which allowed the colors to retain their brilliance. Survage will create frescoes, book illustrations, and a work on paper. Léopold Survage, who holds an original place among the creators of the School of Paris, died in Paris in 1968.