Michel Kikoïne

Michel Kikoïne is one of the emblematic artists of what is known as the Paris School.

Born in Gomel in 1892, he studied in Minsk, then at the Beaux-Arts in Vilnius. He meets Soutine then Kremene, with whom he moved to the Hive in 1914. His attachment to the artists who have marked his youth, Rembrandt, Courbet, Chardin, will never be denied, he will always come back to his masters; but it is in the discovery of the French landscape that his painting takes all its measure and is released. This is where the artist accomplishes, in the most personal way, the synthesis between the Russian tradition of landscape, as embodied by Levitan, and expressionism, the pictorial language forged during the Parisian years.