Nikolai Issaiev, Still Life With Fruits, Gouache And Oil Painting On Board, Midc

A midcentury gouache and oil on board by French-Russian artist Nikolai Issaiev (Odessa, 1891 – Ivry, 1977), depicting a still life of fruits in a bowl with an elongated bottle in the foreground, on a checked background. An earthy palette of purple, pink and grey is set against bright highlights of red, orange and blue, expressive brushwork creating layered, painterly textures where dry brush marks alternate with flat patches of colour. Strong diagonal lines and circles lend the composition a geometric sense of abstraction, while dark outlines and touches of white add volume, amplifying the organic shapes of the fruit and the striking form of the bottle.

Born in Odessa in 1891, Nikolai Issaiev graduated from the Odessa School of Arts and moved to Belgrade in 1919, working as a theatre decorator and holding his first solo exhibition in 1924. In 1925 he settled in Paris, working in Montparnasse and exhibiting alongside Natalia Goncharova and Ossip Zadkine, and showed at the Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries, alongside solo exhibitions in Belgium and Serbia. From the late 1950s, he exhibited in galleries in Paris and New York and took part in a major exhibition of Russian artists of the School of Paris. Focusing on still lifes and landscapes, his work combines geometric forms on the verge of abstraction with an earthy, colourful palette.

Signed 'Issaev' lower left, glazed and mounted in a period grey and red wood frame. A colourful modernist still life, its characterful elements rendered with a strong sense of geometry.

• Framed dimensions: 57 x 45 cm
• Painting dimensions: 48 x 35 cm
• Painting in very good condition.
• Glazed in red and grey wood frame with a white slip, with slight wear to both, commensurate with age.
• Signed ‘Issaiev’ lower left.

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