Count André Lanskoy

Painter, graphic artist, designer. Great-grandson of Count Sergei Lanskoy, who served as minister of the interior under Tsar Alexander II (1855–61). Studied at the Corps des Pages in St Petersburg (until 1917) and at the studio of Alexandra Exter in Kiev (1918). Fought for the Whites in the Russian Civil War (1919). Lived in Paris (from 1921), where he attended the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière, took lessons from Sergei Sudeikin and met Victor Barthe. Member of Oudar (1923) and the Union of Russian Artists in France (1933). Signed a long-term contract with the Galerie Bing (1924) and the Galerie Louis Carré (1944–60). Took up abstraction under the influence of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee (1937) and entirely rejected figurativism (1942). Created abstract collages, designed textiles, embroideries and carpets, illustrated Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman (1950s). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1923). Contributed to the exhibitions of Oudar (1923), Salon d’Automne (1924), Salon des Tuileries (from 1920s), Salon de Mai (from 1949), Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (1961–66), Tchisla (1931–32), group exhibitions with Victor Barthe and Constantine Terechkovitch (1924), Victor Barthe, Constantine Terechkovitch, Jean Pougny, Pavel Tchelitchew and Marc Chagall (1925) and various Russian artists (1930–32), Les peintres russes de l’École de Paris in Saint-Denis (1960) and Paris (1961), Le Regard russe in Heidelberg (1974) and Encore les Russes in Paris (1975). One-man shows in Paris (1925, 1929, 1936, 1942, 1944, 1948, 1951–52, 1957, 1959–61, 1963, 1975, 1979, 1990), Brussels (1948), Antwerp (1952), London (1953), Geneva (1959, 1961), New York (1956, 1957, 1959, 1965, 1969, 1989), Munich (1961), Cannes (1967), Saint-Étienne (1968) and Ravenna (1973).