(Moskau 1902–1976 Paris)
“Entièrement gris clair”, to the stretcher titled, signed Lanskoy, oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm, framed (PP)

The authenticity of the present work has been confirmend by André Schoeller, Paris.

Provenance:
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private Collection, Paris
Artcurial, Paris, 7 December 2009, lot 4
Private Collection, Canada

André Lanskoy was one of the foremost abstract painters of the post-war École de Paris, and in the words of the influential critic Pierre Guégen: ‘one of the greatest of all abstract painters’. […]
Lanskoy’s work from this early period consisted of bold figurative compositions, but from 1937 he began to explore abstraction. Striving to disengage figuration, he achieved his first abstract works in 1940.
[…] Lanskoy’s success as an abstract painter was fully endorsed when he began a sixteen year collaboration with Louis Carré, who was already showing Picasso, Matisse, Hartung and Soulages. In 1948 at Carré’s eponymous gallery at 10 avenue de Messine, Lanskoy held an important one-man exhibition titled Lanskoy, Oeuvres 1944-1948, and furthermore in 1952 and 1957.
His lyrical and dynamic abstract compositions were a revelation in the climate dominated by cold geometric abstraction, and although Lanskoy refused to be categorised, he was undeniably an important forerunner of Tachisme. It is interesting to make a distinction here between Lanskoy’s work and that of the american Abstract Expressionists, and is best defined by Marcel Brion’s term ‘Abstract Impressionism’ for Lanskoy’s style is not merely gestural manifestation of inner emotion, on the contrary, it is an evocation of exterior sensation. (www.haninafinearts.com, 13.10.2015)