Alexis GRITCHENKO (Krolevets 1883 - Vence 1977)... Lot 36

Alexis GRITCHENKO (Krolevets 1883 - Vence 1977) Paris, les bords de Seine Made in 1923 Oil on cardboard 68 x 53 cm Signed lower left " Gritchenko " signed and dated upper right " Grit 23 " Signed on the back in brown ink " A. Gritchenko " Handwritten indications on the back with blue pencil " G.2810 ", red pencil " n°6 " and white chalk " 9568 ". Provenance: Former collection of a journalist of Ukrainian origin, Mr. W.H. (1921-2017). Alexis Gritchenko is a painter, watercolorist, writer and art critic of Ukrainian origin. He studied from 1905 to 1912 at the universities of St. Petersburg, Kiev, Moscow. He learns painting and drawing in the studio of S.I. Svetoslavsky from 1906 to 1908, in that of K.F. Yoon and I. Dudin's studio from 1909 to 1910, and that of P.P. Konchalovsky and I.I. Machkov from 1911 to 1912 in Moscow. He also worked in the studio of V.I. Tatlin and studied Sergei Shchukin's collection, which included works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. In 1911, Alexis Gritchenko visited Paris, the Louvre, met André Lhote, Alexander Archipenko and Henri Le Fauconnier. He then visited many cities in Italy and returned to Moscow where he founded an avant-garde that he called "Tsvetodinamos", (Colour-Motion). Alexis Gritchenko became a professor in a free state workshop in 1918, where he taught with Alexander Shevchenko the essence of the "Tsvetodinamos" theory, the fundamentals of which are the importance of the masses of colour that define and divide space. The theory of Alexis Gritchenko blends with the rank of the Moscow avant-garde, the primitivism of Alexander Shevchenko, Nathalia Goncharova, Michel Larionov, the suprematism of Kazimir Malevitch, constructivism. Rejecting the Bolshevik dictatorship, he decided to go west, he moved to Kiev, then from Sevastopol he went to Constantinople where he stayed for two years. He reached Greece in 1921, arriv