André LANSKOY

André Lanskoy – Life, Lithographs and Original Prints

André Lanskoy (Andrei Mikhailovich Lanskoy) was born in Moscow in 1902 and died in Paris in 1976. A count’s son who fled the Russian Civil War, he reached Paris in 1921 and became one of the great colourists of the post-war School of Paris, moving from blazing figurative interiors to a dense, mosaic-like lyrical abstraction. London took notice early: he featured in the Royal Academy’s survey of the School of Paris in 1950 and had a solo show with a London dealer three years later. Alongside painting he designed tapestries and mosaics, worked on artists’ books, and produced a late suite of colour lithographs on Gogol’s Diary of a Madman.

At Le Coin des Arts you will find a unique gouache, Composition dans les verts, together with signed lithographs: two sheets from the Journal d’un fou (Diary of a Madman) suite, dated 1973 and 1976, Composition sur fond bleu, and an untitled print of 1969. Each has been chosen for the freshness of its colour, the quality of the impression and the condition of the sheet.

A Russian aristocrat in exile (1902-1921)

The son of Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Lanskoy, André was raised in St Petersburg and intended for the army, entering the elite Corps of Pages. As a boy he was captivated by Sergei Sudeikin’s painted stage sets. The Revolution ended that world. He took refuge in Kiev, enlisted in the White Army, followed it to the Crimea and then to Constantinople. According to the education pack published by the LaM museum near Lille, it was in Kiev that he received lessons in gouache and colour from the avant-garde painter Alexandra Exter.

Paris, Wilhelm Uhde and the Galerie Bing (1921-1937)

Lanskoy arrived in Paris in the spring of 1921. He visited Sudeikin’s studio, took classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and painted outdoors at Meudon and Clamart. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse and Soutine shaped his thick, high-keyed brushwork. In 1923 he showed with other Russian émigrés at the Galerie La Licorne and began exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne, where the German critic and dealer Wilhelm Uhde spotted his canvas La Noce (The Wedding). On Uhde’s advice the Galerie Bing gave him a contract and, in 1925, a first solo exhibition. That same year the Lille collector Roger Dutilleul bought his first Lanskoy; when sales collapsed at the end of the decade, Dutilleul supported him for some fifteen years. Much of that collection, enlarged by his nephew Jean Masurel, now belongs to the LaM in Villeneuve-d’Ascq.

Towards abstraction (1937-1949)

Around 1937 an interest in Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky drew him away from the object, and in the early 1940s he broke with figuration altogether. Under the Occupation, when abstract art was frowned upon, the Galerie Jeanne Bucher showed his gouaches and paintings from 4 to 20 May 1944; there he met his fellow Russian Nicolas de Staël. Dutilleul then introduced him to the dealer Louis Carré, who placed him under contract and staged Œuvres 1944-1948 in 1948. In 1949 the French State bought the large canvas Multitudes, now in the Centre Pompidou.

London, Kassel and international recognition (1950-1966)

Britain played a real part in his post-war reputation. In 1950 he was included in L’École de Paris 1900-1950 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in 1953 Arthur Tooth & Sons gave him a solo exhibition, Paintings 1925-1953. A second London show followed at the Kaplan Gallery in 1961. Further afield he was shown at the Guggenheim in New York (Younger European Painters, 1953) and at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, and he was invited twice to documenta in Kassel, in 1959 and 1964. In these years he designed tapestry cartoons for Aubusson and began working with the poet-publisher Pierre Lecuire, producing Cortège (1959) and then Dédale. The Musée Galliera in Paris honoured him with a retrospective in 1966.

Gogol and the last decade (1966-1976)

For more than fifteen years Lanskoy kept returning to Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, the monologue of a minor clerk sliding into delusion. He produced well over a hundred and fifty collages and gouaches on the text (sources differ on the exact number), as well as large colour lithographs issued in his final years. With his pupil Catherine Zoubtchenko he also carried out public mosaic commissions. After a solo exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Zurich (1969), he died in Paris in 1976. The LaM devoted a major retrospective to him, Lanskoy, un peintre russe à Paris, from 24 September 2011 to 15 January 2012.

Lanskoy as a printmaker

Lanskoy was a painter first; his prints extend his gouaches and papiers collés. Most of them are colour lithographs, built from flat patches of colour and quick, nervous marks. They fall into three groups. First, books: Pierre Lecuire’s Cortège (1959-1960, 170 copies), whose 24 plates are pochoir (stencil) prints after his collages, coloured by Maurice Beaufumé and printed by Féquet et Baudier; and La Genèse (1966), published by Les Bibliophiles de l’Union française with colour lithographs. Second, single lithographs of the 1960s, signed and numbered in pencil. Third, the Journal d’un fou suite: large sheets (about 95 × 65 cm) on Fabriano paper, dated 1973 and 1976, signed in pencil and numbered in Arabic or Roman numerals depending on the edition.

As far as we are aware, no catalogue raisonné of Lanskoy’s prints has been published. There is therefore no standard reference number, unlike the Mourlot numbers used for Chagall or Miró, and any such number quoted for a Lanskoy print should be treated with caution. A print is best identified by its title, date, technique, dimensions, paper, edition and, where known, printer and publisher. For the paintings, the standard monographs are Jean Grenier’s (Hazan, 1960) and Pascaline Dron and Angelo Pittiglio’s (1990).

Collecting Lanskoy prints: a buyer’s guide

Edition and numbering. Lanskoy’s lithographs are normally numbered in pencil. For the Diary of a Madman sheets, impressions numbered out of 100 and others in Roman numerals both appear, so always ask for the exact justification. See the printing.

Signature. Edition impressions carry a pencil signature, “Lanskoy”, lower right. In books, often only the colophon is signed, so a plate taken from a book may well be unsigned. See the signature.

Reproductions. The Lanskoy volume in Hazan’s “Peintres d’aujourd’hui” series (1960) contains photogravure plates after his paintings, signed in the plate and unnumbered. They are often sold under painting titles such as Objet sans ombre; they are reproductions, not original prints.

Posters. Exhibition posters, such as Galerie Louis Carré’s of 1957, are attractive period pieces, often partly offset, but they are not signed original prints.

Paper and condition. Broad areas of saturated colour fade and scuff easily. Check the margins, light-staining and old hinges, and choose conservation framing.

Provenance. A gallery label (Louis Carré, Jeanne Bucher, Arthur Tooth) or a documented collection history adds real value, particularly for a gouache. Our guarantees are set out on our authenticity page.

We select Lanskoy’s work for colour and condition, and show it alongside other Russian-born painters of the School of Paris, Nicolas de Staël, Serge Poliakoff and Serge Charchoune, and abstract contemporaries such as Hans Hartung and Gérard Schneider. Explore the School of Paris and lyrical abstraction, our engravings and lithographs and our illustrated books.

Sources and further reading

Jean Grenier, André Lanskoy, Hazan, Paris, 1960 · Pascaline Dron and Angelo Pittiglio, André Lanskoy, Paris, 1990 · Lanskoy, un peintre russe à Paris, exhibition catalogue, LaM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 2011 · LaM – Lanskoy education pack · Centre Pompidou – Multitudes, 1949 · Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger – André Lanskoy · Galerie Applicat-Prazan – Chronology · Artnet – André Lanskoy, biography and exhibitions · documenta – II. documenta, 1959