Léopold Survage (variant names Léopold Sturzwage, Leopold Sturwage, Leopoldij Sturzwasgh, Leopoldij Lvovich Sturzwage) was an important French painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 of Russian-Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

-Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 descent born in Vilmanstrand, Finland (with selected references indicating a birthplace of Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Russia).

Biography

At a young age, Survage was directed to enter the piano factory operated by his Finnish father. He learned to play piano, then completed a commercial diploma in 1897. After a severe illness at the age of 22, Survage rethought his career and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture

Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture

The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. The school was formed by the 1865 merger of a private art college, established in Moscow in 1832, and the Palace School of Architecture, established in 1749 by Dmitry Ukhtomsky. By...

. Introduced to the modern movement through the collections of Sergei Shchukin

Sergei Shchukin

Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, following a trip to Paris in 1897, when he bought his first Monet. He later bought numerous works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, among...

 and Ivan Morozov, he cast his lot with the Russian avant-garde

Russian avant-garde

The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960...

 and, by 1906, was loosely affiliated with the circle of the magazine Zolotoye runo (Golden fleece—see also Maximilian Voloshin

Maximilian Voloshin

Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin was a Russian poet and famous Freemason. He was one of the significant representatives of the Symbolist movement in Russian culture and literature...

). He met Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.-Biography:...

, exhibiting with him in the company of David Burlyuk, Vladimir Burlyuk, Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was an avant-garde Russian painter.-Life and work:...

 and Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist , painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Her great-aunt was Natalia Pushkina, wife of the poet Alexander Pushkin.-Life and work:...

. With Hélène Moniuschko, later his wife, he travelled to Western Europe, visiting Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in July 1908. The couple eventually settled in Paris where Survage worked as a piano tuner and briefly attended the short-lived school run by Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

. He exhibited with the Jack of Diamonds

Jack of Diamonds (artists)

Jack of Diamonds , also called Knave Of Diamonds, was a group of artists founded in 1909 in Moscow. The group included Robert Falk, Aristarkh Lentulov, Ilya Mashkov, Alexander V. Kuprin, Alexander Osmerkin, Wladimir Burliuk, and Pyotr Konchalovsky. The Knave of Diamonds was a scandalous exhibition...

 group in Moscow in 1910 and first showed his work in France—at the urging of Archipenko—in the Salon d'Automne

Salon d'Automne

In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...

 of 1911.

From 1912, Survage produced abstract compositions entitled Coloured Rhythm. He planned to animate these works by means of film, using colour and spatial movement to evoke sensation. He saw these abstract images as flowing together to form "symphonies in colour", but he exhibited them separately at the Salon d'Automne

Salon d'Automne

In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...

 in 1913 and Salon des Indépendants in 1914. Articles on these works were published by Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

 (Paris-J., July 1914) and Survage himself (Soirées Paris, July-August 1914). In June 1914, in order to develop his idea, Survage unsuccessfully applied for a patent to the Gaumont Film Company

Gaumont Film Company

Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....

. Had he later been able to raise the funds, he would have preceded Viking Eggeling

Viking Eggeling

Viking Eggeling was a Swedish artist and filmmaker. His work is of significance in the area of experimental film, and has been described as absolute film and Visual Music....

 and Hans Richter

Hans Richter (artist)

Hans Richter was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.-Germany:...

 as the first to develop abstract films.

Beginning in 1917, Survage shared a studio—and a penchant for alcoholic excesses—with Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...

 in Paris. Survage later moved to Nice

Nice

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

 and, over the next eight years, produced highly structured oils and works on paper linked together by a series of leitmotifs, repeating groups of symbolic elements—man, sea, building, flower, window, curtain, bird—as if they were protagonists in a series of moving images. The influence may have been Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

's, an artist well known for his insertions of floating couples, cows, roosters, and sundry Jewish iconography. By 1922, Survage had begun to move away from Cubism in favour of the neo-classical

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 form. He was perhaps influenced by commissions for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Ballets Russes

The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...

, beginning with sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

's opera buffa

Opera buffa

Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 Mavra

Mavra

Mavra is a one-act opera buffa composed by Igor Stravinsky, and one of the earliest works of Stravinsky's 'neo-classical' period. The libretto of the opera, by Boris Kochno, is based on Aleksandr Pushkin's The Little House in Kolomna. Mavra is about 25 minutes long, and features two arias, a...

 at the Paris Opéra

Palais Garnier

The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...

 in 1922. Although mainly a painter, he also produced stage, tapestry, and textile designs during this period (notably for the house of Chanel

Chanel

Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...

 in 1933). Toward the end of the 1930s, as a result of his contact with André Masson

André Masson

André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...

, Survage became increasingly charmed by symbols and mysticism. The curvilinear forms that had previously dominated his compositions came, once again, under the control of geometric structure.

Survage was inducted into France's Légion d'Honneur

Légion d'honneur

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...

in 1963. He died on 31 October 1968.

Selected exhibitions

• 1968: Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon
• 1930: Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1929: Knoedler Gallery, New York
• 1914: Salon des Indépendants, Paris
• 1913: Salon d'Automne, Paris

Selected collections

• Musée national d'art moderne Georges Pompidou, Paris
• Bezalel Museum, Jerusalem
• Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
• Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon
• Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva
• Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• National Museum of Arts, Moscow
• National Museum, Athens

External links

• MoMA.org (Léopold Survage)
• Artnet.com (Léopold Survage)