Issaiev Nicolas (1891-1977) Russian School '' Landscape

Nicolas Issaiev is a French artist born near Odessa in 1891. Painter, graphic designer and theater designer, Issaiev studied in Odessa and Kharkiv in the studios of V. Shuchajev and A. Yakovlev and at the Ranson Academy in Paris. He was in the army during World War I before immigrating in 1919 to Belgrade where he worked at the National Theater as a decorator. In 1925 he moved to Paris where he became known to the artistic world of Montparnasse by painting landscapes, still lifes and some portraits. However, he will never be integrated among the famous painters of Montparnasse such as Soutine and Foujita and even less among the painters of the School of Paris of which he was nevertheless indeed a part. The only movement and group he managed to integrate into was the rather obscure Czech-Belgian group Circle (Krug) Group with which he exhibited many times, in Brussels, Paris and Belgrade. In 1940-1945, he moved to the south of France to live there alone. After World War II, he made frequent trips to Switzerland, Italy and Spain. Between 1945 and 1950, Issaiev produced numerous illustrations for works of art editions, in particular on the publications of Pierre de Ronsard, Edgar Allan Poe and Nikolay Gogol. In the 1950s and 1960s, he exhibited in Paris at the La Boétie and A. Weil galleries as well as at the P. Bernet gallery in New York. He participated with several of his paintings in the great exhibition which took place in Paris in 1961 then in Russia in 1974 under the title Les Artistes russes de l'École de Paris, thus finding three years before his death a beginning of recognition.