Sans titre (carré parfait), 1981

Lise Levitsky aka Elisabeth Gainsbo  

Born March 5, 1926, in Pau and died October 3, 2022, in Quillio, Brittany, Lise Levitsky was a French painter of Russian origin. She was the first wife of Serge Gainsbourg. A painter from Groupe R, she was a friend of the painters Jean Leppien and Dali, whom she met with Gainsbourg. She was also a psychoanalyst.

The daughter of Russian immigrant aristocrats, she was a fashion model and secretary to the surrealist poet Georges Hugnet. She studied painting at the Académie de Montmartre (later the Académie Fernand Léger) and it was during a painting class in March 1947 that she met Lucien Ginsburg, the future Serge Gainsbourg.

They married on November 3, 1951, at the town hall of Mesnil-le-Roi. The couple moved to Paris, but Lucien later moved away from painting, and their unrequited love affair foundered. They divorced in 1957.

Their romance rekindled, and by happy coincidence they met again, notably in 1968, after Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot broke up. Their love was still unraveling, even though it is likely that their relationship continued, occasionally and discreetly.

Gainsbourg's song Elisa was, she says, written for her.

Lise had a second husband, Jean-Marie Grandjouan, the grandson of Jules Grandjouan.

Exploring the work of Elisabeth Levitsky (Grandjouan) is to venture into a historical, artistic, mathematical, and enigmatic journey.

At the beginning is the square, probably in reference to Kazimir Malevich.

Reviewing Lise Levitsky's paintings, we find on the back of two of them a reference to CJ Bouwkamp.

Christoffel Jacob Bouwkamp (1915-2003) holds a doctorate in mathematical sciences and devoted much of his career to the study of squares and square rectangles.

This is where what makes Levitsky's level of research enigmatic begins, and what prompted him to explore a complex mathematical field to produce a large part of his work.