Alexis ARAPOFF (1904 – 1948) School of Paris

Alexis Arapoff

A very fine painting of a young bride by the Russian-American painter of the Paris School, Alexis Arapoff, painted in Paris in 1927. A great deal of softness and poetry emanates from this work.

Oil on canvas
Signed, dated 1927 and located “Paris” lower right
Dimensions: 55 x 46 cm
with frame: 77 x 67 cm

Price: 8500 euros

Alexis Arapoff, a Russian then American painter. A long-time resident of France, he was a member of the early École de Paris.

André Warnod first used the expression “École de Paris” in France on January 27, 1925, in an article for the literary magazine Comœdia. It referred to the group of foreign artists, often from Central Europe, who had arrived in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century in search of favorable conditions for their art. They mainly settled in Montparnasse.

Portraits are one of Alexis Arapoff’s favorite themes.

Alexis Arapoff’s favorite themes are landscapes, still lifes, portraits and religious subjects. The painter is inspired by emerging stylistic trends. He emphasizes the importance of color in painting, as in the choice of this orange color against which the bride stands out.

Biography

Alexis Paul Arapoff (Russian: Алексей Павлович Арапов), born in St. Petersburg and died in Gardner, Massachusetts, was a Russian and then American painter. Long living in France, he moved to Boston in the USA in 1930.A Parisian until 1930, he enjoyed a certain success there in the pre-war years. In oil, fresco or other media such as mosaic, Arapoff painted landscapes, flowers, portraits, still lifes and, after the 1930s, religious subjects.

Childhood and early training

He was born into a noble family: his father, Pavel Arapoff, was a military doctor, and his mother, Ekaterina, an eye surgeon, was one of the first women to graduate from Moscow University. He spent his youth in Saratov, where his parents lived. He visited Crimea and the Baltic coast. In 1913, accompanied by his mother and sister, he traveled to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, visiting numerous museums. During the revolution in 1918, to escape food shortages, his family moved to a colony of Volga Germans near Saratov. It was here that Hans Van Bergler, later a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, gave him his first painting lessons.

In Moscow

In 1923, he moved to Moscow, where he designed furniture for a workers’ hostel and costumes and sets for Nikolai Foregger’s avant-garde theater. He painted portraits and posters, and was introduced to modern French art by Nicolas Simon. It was Simon who encouraged him to go to Paris to paint. He joined Nicolas Evreïnoff’s “Faux Miroir” theater company, and took advantage of a tour of Warsaw in 1925 to leave the USSR for Paris.

In Paris

To earn a living, he began working in a scarf-painting studio. He met other Russian artists such as Michel Larionov, Nathalie Goncharoff, Ilia Zdanevitch, Jean Pougny and André Lanskoy. He paints landscapes, portraits and still lifes. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1926, the Salon des Indépendants in 1928 and the Salon des Tuileries in 1929 and 1930. He participated in group exhibitions of Russian artists in Paris organized by Galerie M. Henry in 1927, Galerie des Quatre Chemins in 1928, Galerie V. Girchman in May 1929, galerie Zborowski in 1929, galerie Zak in 1930, galerie L’Époque in 1931.In 1927, Galerie M. Henry held a one-man show for him; all the paintings exhibited were sold. Then it was the turn of Galerie Percier in 1928 and Galerie Charles-Auguste Girard in 1930.He met an American, Catherine Green, a student at the Sorbonne. They married in Paris in 1929, with whom they had 6 children, and moved to Boston, U.S.A. in 1930.

In Boston

Arapoff painted many religious subjects. He did not, however, abandon the other subjects that had made up his body of work. In 1934, he turned his attention to researching and applying the medieval technical methods of Orthodox icon painters. He strove to create his works in a spirit that combined the ancient art of the icon with the influence of the modern art of the time.He became an American citizen in 1937.He died in 1948 in Gardner Hospital, Massachusetts, after a car accident.

Œuvres

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