Léon Zack

Biography

Léon Zack

Russian painter, naturalized French, Léon Zack began to paint at the age of thirteen and, following his departure with his mother in Moscow, he became a pupil of Jakimchenko (from 1905 to 1907) then Mashkov. He exhibited for the first time in 1907 at the Salon of the Federation of Moscow painters when he was only 15 years old! He was also a poet and produced sets and costumes for dance and theater, but it was the painting that he would devote mainly his life.

Figurative artist until 1946, painting mostly portraits, little by little, his brush becomes expressionist and then turns to abstraction. His work is oriented by the desire to deepen his painting, which Jean-Michel Maulpoix calls ‘sky instinct’. He was not part of the avant-garde who turned to abstraction in the 1910s: he only accepted to paint abstract paintings when (around 1946) he was able to show, not them, a reality higher than appearances. Indeed, Léon Zack thinks that a painting must express more than a corelation between forms and colors: it can bring, at a glance, a thought that it would take many pages to put in writing.

In his abstractions, Léon Zack tries to rediscover the innocence of paper with oil paint on the canvas. He places more or less accentuated spots, variances of white ... The forms then tell a truth that goes beyond the artist's dexterity.

Exhibitions selected

Pierre qui roule... Les figures du paysage, Éditions Françoise Livinec, 2012

Une oeuvre de Léon Zack dans Finistère mag, avril-mai 2013, Portrait : Françoise Livinec (page 1 / Page 2 )

Exhibitions selected

2014

Art Paris Art Fair 2014, Galerie Françoise Livinec, Paris