189

Leopold Survage French Cubist Oil on Canvas

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:150.00 USD Estimated At:3,000.00 - 5,000.00 USD
Leopold Survage French Cubist Oil on Canvas
ABSENTEE-ONLY BIDDING AVAILABLE. HIGHEST BIDS WILL BE TAKEN TO LIVE AUCTION FLOOR.

888 Auctions endeavors to accurately describe the items being sold, but all property offered for sale is strictly as is, where is, and with all faults. All representations or statements made by 888 Auctions and its representatives, or in the catalogue or other publication or report, as to the correctness of description, genuineness, attribution, provenance, or period of the Lot, are statements of opinion only.
Oil on canvas, stretched and framed. Featuring a cubist portrait of nude. Signed SuRVage on the lower left corner. Attributed to Leopold Survage (1879-1968, French). 60.5 x 38 cm (24 x 15 inches). Framed size: 71 x 48 cm (28.0 x 18.9 inches). PROVENANCE: Southern Ontario estate

Leopold Survage (1879-1968) was a Finnish-born French artist who produced dynamic abstractions of city scenes. Fracturing perspectival space into planar segments, he constructed multiple viewpoints within larger compositions. In this way, structures, flowers, trees, curtains, and birds are reorganized into a fragmented yet coherent pictorial space. In what is perhaps his best-known series, Colored Rhythm: Study for the Film (1913), Survage sought to create a sense of animation through the static medium of painting. “Colored music is in no way an illustration or an interpretation of a musical work,” he once explained. “It is an autonomous art, although based on the same psychological principles as music.” Born on July 31, 1879 in Lappeenranta, Finland, Survage intended to take on his father’s piano factory business but instead studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, where met Alexander Archipenko. The artist moved to Paris in 1910, where he became the studio mate of Amedeo Modigliani and began designing sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. After coming under the influence of the Surrealist André Masson in the 1930’s, Survage’s subject matter became increasingly mystical. The artist died on October 31, 1968 in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.