LEOPOLD SURVAGE: NOTABLE SALES

Leopold Survage was widely recognised as a leading figure of the Avant-Garde. Our London gallery has acquired and sold many notable paintings by Leopold Survage. We are always looking to acquire and buy more artworks by this artist.

 

Leopold Survage was born 1879 to a Russian family of Piano manufacturers. After a formal education Survage became fascinated by contemporary art, and his most formative experiences of the Avant-Garde were in the city’s museums, the Shchukin and Morosov collections in particular. Survage was well known in the Moscow Avant-Garde by 1906, working in the same circles as future modernists like Goncharova and Larionov and culminating in an exhibition with the Jack of Diamonds group alongside Malevich, Kandinsky and Gleizes.

 

In 1908 inspired Survage settle in the Paris, then epicentre of modernist art. There he absorbed Cubist and Constructivist ideas whilst studying under Matisse. By 1912 Survage had moved to complete abstraction, one of the earliest artists to do so. Like many of his contemporaries, Survage saw abstraction as a challenge to the static quality that defined traditional art.

 

In 1918 Survage moved to Nice with his close friend Amadeo Modigliani to escape the encroaching war. By the early 1920s, Survage was widely recognised as a leading figure in the Avant-Garde. In 1920, he would join the Séction d’Or group alongside Braque, Gris, Leger and Picasso, and although the artist always refused to ally himself with Cubism, his work reflects his proximity to the movement. While Survage’s compositional innovations were inherent in his earliest works, it was only after the artist began to spend increasing time in the South of France from 1924 onwards that his painting achieved the colouristic variety for which it is now celebrated.