Paul (Pavel) Kotlarevsky

Paul Kotlarevsky, “Man Reading”/”Shoveling Sand on the Seine”, circa 1916, Double-Sided Oil on Canvas, 78.8 x 98.5 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1885 at the Iset River city of Yekaterinburg to a merchant family of the timber trade, Paul (Pavel) Kotlarevsky was a Russian painter and graphic artist who experimented in various artistic styles, predominately Cubism and Fauvism. He worked in a number of genres that included portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and collages.

Although formally educated as a lawyer, Kotlarevsky developed a passion for art in his early years. His parents, as a reward for his graduation, sponsored his trip abroad to view the art of Europe. Traveling with his wife and son, Kotlarevsky studied Western historic and contemporary art traditions in Rome and Vienna, finally reaching Paris in 1913. Kotlarevsky decided at the onset of the First World War to fight alongside the French army instead of returning to Russia. While he was fighting, the Russian Revolution completely changed his homeland; his family lost everything that they had owned.

Paul Kotlarevsky decided to remain in France. However, as his qualifications as a lawyer were not recognized in France, Kotlarevsky decided to pursue his interest in painting and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He became a member of the Parisian artistic circles and associated with numerous artists. Among these were Russian painter and Dada poet Serge Charchoune, French Cubist painter Henri Victor Gabriel Le Fauconnier, a leading figure among the Montparnasse Cubists, and Spanish painter Francisco Bores, a close associate of Pablo Picasso and Henry Matisse.

Having lost his Russian possessions and unable to fully support his family through his artistic work or legal knowledge, Kotlarevsky worked in a series of menial jobs that included driving a truck and working at Les Halles, the central fresh food market in Paris. He continued his painting and experimented with a variety of styles. Kotlarevsky was, however, drawn predominantly to the shifting perspective points and dynamic geometry of Cubism as well as the color theories and expressive gestures of Fauvism. He exhibited his work in 1933 at the Salon des Indépendants, an annual independent art exhibition held in Paris.

Paul Kotlarevsky’s work was influenced by many of the contemporary French Cubist and Fauvist painters including Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and artist and theoretician Albert Gleizes. Kotlarevsky’s 1913-1915 “Still Life with Fruit Bowl” is a reflection of his admiration for the work of Braque. Similar to many of the Russian émigré artists living in Europe during the early part of the twentieth-century, Kotlarevsky’s body of work combined and united French and Russian artistic traditions. His work featured many of the characteristics of Russian avant-garde traditions that can also be seen in the work of artists such as Cubo-Futurist painters and designers Lyubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster, and Natalia Goncharova, co-founder of Rayonism, one of Russia’s first abstract art movements.

Paul Kotlarevsky died after a long illness in Paris in 1950 and was interred at the Russian cemetery of Saint-Geneviève-de-Bois near Paris. His works are mainly in private collections.

Notes: Kotlarevsky’s “Man Reading”, executed circa 1916, is a double-sided painting with his “Shoveling Sand on the Seine” on the obverse. The more colorful and intimate composition of “Man Reading” with its numerous planes and geometric elements is backed by the dynamic view of workers shoveling sand outside a large-scale view of an angled city. These two works are excellent examples of Cubism with their shifting perspective points and dissected compositions.

Top Insert Image: Paul Kotlarevsky, “Portrait of a Lady in a Scarf”, Date Unknown, Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 36 x 24 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Paul Kotlarevsky, “Still lIfe with Violin”, circa 1913-1915, Watercolor with Pastel and Collage on Paper, 46 x 34 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Paul Kotlarevsky, “Still Life with Fruit Bowl”, 1913-1915, Watercolor, Gouache, Ink and Collage on Card, 27 x 29 cm, Private Collection

Albert Gleizes

Albert Gleizes, “Man on a Balcony”, Oil on Canvas, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art

“Man on a Balcony” is a large oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The painting was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d’Automne of 1912. This Cubist contribution to the salon created a controversy in the French Parliament about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such ‘barbaric art’.

Gleizes was a founder of Cubism, and demonstrated the principles of the movement in this monumental six foot tall painting with its projecting planes and fragmented lines. The large size of the painting reflects Gleizes’s ambition to show it in the large annual salon exhibitions in Paris, where he was able with others of his entourage to bring Cubism to wider audiences. The painting was completed around the same time as Albert Gleizes co-authored with Jean Metzinger a major treatise and manifesto on cubism entitled “Du Cubisme”.

“The plastic results are determined by the technique. As we can see straightaway, it is not a matter of describing, nor is it a matter of abstracting from, anything that is external to itself. There is a concrete act that has to be realised, a reality to be produced – of the same order as that which everyone is prepared to recognise in music, at the lowest level of the esemplastic scale, and in architecture, at the highest.”- Albert Gleizes, The Epic: From Immobile to mobile Form”, 1925

Albert Gleizes

Albert Gleizes, “L’Homme au Balcon”, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud), 1912, Oil on Canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Albert Gleizes was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. In 1912 Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du “Cubisme”. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d’Or group of artists.

He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his many theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany, where especially at the Bauhaus his ideas were given thoughtful consideration. Gleizes spent four crucial years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art.