Art Events, Paris

Almine Rech – Matignon | Serge Poliakoff “Image Divine” – September 7 to October 5

Paris, Matignon

September 7 – October 5, 2024

Almine Rech Paris, Matignon is pleased to present Image Divine, Serge
Poliakoff’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from September
7 to October 5, 2024.
This exhibition will explore the influence of the sacred in the work of the
celebrated French artist who represented France at the 1962 Venice
Biennale.

Serge Poliakoff
Red Blue, 1951
Oil on canvas
89 x 116 cm, 35 x 45 1/2 inches
Alexis Poliakoff – Courtesy of the estate and Almine Rech
Estate and Almine Rech

Portrait of Serge Poliakoff, 1968
Alexis Poliakoff
Courtesy of the estate and Almine Rech

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 spiritualist nature, which unexpectedly connects him to abstractionism
and thus to the work of Kandinsky.
In the context of Poliakoff’s abstract compositions, which are ‘domestic in
their scale—but not in their vision’ according to Sean Scully, his personal
icon, which has never been published, will be featured, as well as the
treasures of his library.
— Dr. Dimitri Ozerkov

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