SERGE CHARCHOUNE

Serge Charchoune: Biography, Gouaches and Original Prints – A Collector’s Guide

Serge Charchoune (Sergei Ivanovich Charchoun) was born in 1888 in Buguruslan, in the Samara region of Russia (a few sources give 1889), and died at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, south-east of Paris, on 24 November 1975. Painter and poet, he lived in Paris from 1912 and passed through almost every avant-garde of his time – Cubism, Dada, Purism – without ever belonging wholly to any of them. His mature work, a quiet, near-white painting built on the rhythm of music, earned him a retrospective at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1971. In Britain he has been championed above all by the painter and critic Merlin James, whose exhibitions in Edinburgh and Glasgow have made this ‘other modernist’ better known to a new generation of collectors of School of Paris works on paper and prints.

Le Coin des Arts currently holds a single unique work by Charchoune: an untitled gouache heightened with pencil, dated 1963 (15 × 32 cm), from the years when his palette was narrowing towards white. We follow the artist’s market closely and offer his works on paper and original prints as they become available, chosen for quality, condition and provenance; you can follow the artist to be told of new arrivals.

Russia, Paris and Barcelona

Intended for a career in trade, the young Charchoun turned instead to painting. Turned down by the art school in Kazan, he studied in private studios in Moscow, was called up for military service, deserted and reached Paris in 1912. At the Académie de la Palette he was taught by Henri Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger and met his companion, the sculptor Hélène Grunhoff. When war broke out the couple took refuge in Barcelona, where Charchoune came across Albert Gleizes, Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia and studied Hispano-Moorish decoration. The dealer Josep Dalmau gave both artists solo exhibitions at the Galeries Dalmau; Charchoune’s, in 1916, showed abstract pictures he called ‘ornamental’, the root of his later ‘ornamental Cubism’.

A Russian Dadaist in Paris and Berlin

After the October Revolution Charchoune gave up the idea of going home and returned to Paris, where he rejoined Picabia. One of his drawings appeared in Picabia’s review 391 (no. 14, November 1920). He took part in the mock ‘trial of Maurice Barrès’ staged by André Breton in May 1921, and showed machine-like drawings at the Salon Dada organised by Tristan Tzara at the Galerie Montaigne. That same year he published Foule immobile, a long poem illustrated with his own drawings, and founded the Russian poets’ circle Palata Poetov. In 1922 he moved to Berlin, held a solo show of ‘ornamental Cubist’ canvases at Herwarth Walden’s gallery Der Sturm, and launched Perevoz Dada – a little review in Russian, entirely written by himself, which ran to thirteen numbers. His anthology Dadaizm followed in 1923, the year he settled back in Paris for good.

Purism, Lean Years and the Discovery of Music

In Paris Charchoune was drawn to the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. In 1925 he met Amédée Ozenfant, who steered him towards Purism; his pared-down still lifes won praise from Le Corbusier. Galerie Jeanne Bucher gave him a solo exhibition in 1926, and André Level showed him at the Galerie Percier from 15 to 27 April 1929. The Depression then cost him his buyers: for years he sold almost nothing and wrote more than he painted. The dealer Raymond Creuze stood by him, and from the mid-1930s water and, above all, music became the lasting subjects of his work.

The Late Monochromes and the 1971 Retrospective

From the mid-1950s Charchoune’s painting grew more abstract and spare. Long horizontal canvases are covered with small rhythmic touches, more or less loaded with paint, that transcribe the experience of listening to Bach, Beethoven or Handel; colour fades almost to white. The Centre Pompidou owns his Concerto pour piano n° 4 de Beethoven (June 1960, oil on canvas, 97 × 195 cm), given by the artist in 1971. In Paris the Galerie de Seine took up his work in the early 1970s, publishing René Guerra’s Profil de Charchoune in 1973. The Musée National d’Art Moderne mounted a retrospective of around a hundred works in 1971. In 1973 he painted Galapagos, a memory of a long journey to the islands. On his death in 1975 he bequeathed paintings and drawings to the national museum, which entered the collection in 1976.

Charchoune in Britain

Charchoune’s British reception is recent and largely the work of Merlin James. From 17 November 2012 to 16 February 2013 the Talbot Rice Gallery of the University of Edinburgh showed a survey he curated, accompanied by a catalogue with his essay ‘Charchoune’s Trans-Modernism’ and a text by Annick Morard on the painter as writer. The show then travelled, as Other Modernisms, to the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago in 2013. In April and May 2018, during Glasgow International, James showed some thirty paintings from the 1930s and 1960s at 42 Carlton Place, the Glasgow house he shared with the painter Carol Rhodes. A British link also runs through Charchoune’s prints: in Le Livre des livres (1974) his etching sits beside two plates by Henry Moore, whose foundation catalogues the book in detail.

The Printed Work and the Catalogue Raisonné

Charchoune was never a professional printmaker, and his small printed œuvre belongs mainly to collective illustrated books. In 1962 he contributed an etching to volume I of Michel Seuphor’s Futurists, Abstractionists, Dadaists: the Forerunners of the Avant-Garde, published in Milan by the Galleria Schwarz and printed in Paris by the Atelier Georges Leblanc in an edition of 60. In 1974 the poet-publisher Pierre Lecuire issued Le Livre des livres: twenty-two poems and twenty-two prints by fifteen artists, all variations on Hercules Seghers’s etching The Three Books, with text printed by Fequet et Baudier. The edition of 130 is signed by author and artists; the first 25 copies include a suite of the prints on China paper, each signed in pencil.

No catalogue of the prints has been published, to our knowledge. The standard reference for the paintings is Pierre Guénégan’s catalogue raisonné in five chronological volumes (1912-1924 to 1961-1975), published by Lanwell & Leeds. Works are numbered by year: ‘Guénégan 1970/021’ is the twenty-first work recorded for 1970. A further catalogue raisonné is being prepared by the Association des Amis de Serge Charchoune.

Collecting Charchoune: A Buyer’s Guide

Unique work or print. A gouache or drawing is unique; a print exists in an edition. With Charchoune, unique works on paper are far more common than prints. See what is an original print.

Signature and date. He usually signed ‘Charchoune’ in Latin capitals and often dated his work, sometimes to the month (‘VI 60’). An unsigned sheet is not necessarily suspect, but it needs stronger provenance. See the signature.

Catalogue and certificate. For a painting, ask for the Guénégan number or a certificate of inclusion from the Charchoune committee. For a gouache, check with the Association whether the sheet is, or can be, recorded.

Book plates. The Seuphor etching (1962) and the Livre des livres plate (1974) are genuine original prints. A loose sheet should be traceable to its book; the pencil-signed China-paper suite of 1974 is the most desirable state. See the printing.

Lithographs and posters. Signed and numbered lithographs do turn up at auction. With no published catalogue, insist on printer, publisher and date. An exhibition poster or offset reproduction is not an original print.

Condition and provenance. His pale gouaches are sensitive to light and acidic mounts. Provenance from Galerie Creuze, Galerie de Seine or Jeanne Bucher is a plus. Choose conservation framing and read our authenticity guarantees.

We also select works by artists linked to Charchoune by history or temperament: the Russian-born painters Serge Poliakoff and André Lanskoy, the Dadaist Hans Arp, and his fellow contributors to Le Livre des livres, Vieira da Silva and Raoul Ubac. Explore the School of Paris and lyrical abstraction and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Merlin James and Annick Morard, Serge Charchoune, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, and Smart Museum of Art, Chicago · Pierre Guénégan, Charchoune, catalogue raisonné, 5 vols, Lanwell & Leeds · René Guerra, Profil de Charchoune, Galerie de Seine, Paris, 1973 · Pierre Lecuire, Le Livre des livres, Paris, 1974 · Henry Moore Foundation – Le Livre des livres · Frieze – Serge Charchoune, Glasgow International 2018 · Smart Museum of Art – Other Modernisms · Centre Pompidou – Concerto pour piano n° 4 de Beethoven · MoMA – Charchoune etching, 1962 · International Dada Archive – Perevoz Dada