Serge Poliakoff was one of the pivotal members of the ‘New’ Ecole de Paris that drove the rise of lyrical abstraction in Europe after the Second World War. Alongside Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung and Georges Mathieu, Poliakoff was celebrated for his poetic approach to colour and daring exploration of form that contrasted with the severity of geometric abstraction. This unique style of ‘colour-form’ painting was particularly inspired by Poliakoff’s meeting with Wassily Kandinsky and the contemporary patchworks of harmonious or contrasting colour by his close friends, Sonia and Robert Delaunay.

In this remarkable late example of his work from 1959, Poliakoff reduces his composition to vibrant interlocking shapes in white and the primary colours. The jigsaw like pattern slides together in perfect harmony, in a careful balance between form and colour, with neither overpowering the other. Poliakoff relished shape and tone acting in unity, to produce a work of art where all aspects are entirely resolved. He described how “If you let it your colour will take charge of you. Similarly with your forms: the spontaneous form for an artist to use is always an organic one, but you’ve got to be in control of it. A child will use all the colours in the box at once, instinctively, and if you don’t want to make that same mistake”.

Poliakoff was one of the countless émigrés that fled to Paris from the Russian Revolution in 1917, initially earning his living as a musician in the city’s cabarets while training as an artist at the Académie Forchot, Académie de la Grande Chaumière and Slade School in London. He achieved considerable success during his lifetime with a retrospective of his work at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1963), and displays at Documenta III (1964) and Venice Biennale (1962). Poliakoff’s work can now be found in international collections such as Tate, UK; Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, USA; Museum of Modern Art, USA; Musée d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris, France; Museum Ludwig, Germany; Moderna Museet, Sweden; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Museo de Arte modern de la Ciudad Buenos Aires, Argentina and Centre Georges Pompidou, France.