Gritchenko, Alexei
Alexei Gritchenko was born in a small town of Krolevets in the Chernihiv Governorate of the Russian Empire ( now in Sumy oblast in the north-west of Ukraine) in 1883. He started to draw from an early age and took drawing lessons from the age of 9.
Gritchenko began his studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Kyiv University in 1906. He also attended Serhiy Svetoslavsky ( 1857-1931) from 1906 to 1908 where he met and worked together with Alexander Bogomazov (1880-1930) and Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964), the important figures of the Avant-garde movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20s century. From 1908 Alexei continued his science studies at the Moscow University and attended the art studio of Konstantin Yuon (1875-1958) and Ivan Dudin ( 1867-1924) in 1909-1910 and the art studio of Ilya Mashkov (1881-1944), one of the founders and a prominent member of Jack of Diamond, Russian Avant-garde art group, in 1911-1912.
Gritchenko started to exhibit in Moscow with the New Society of Artists, Jack of Diamonds, Union of Youth and other Avant-garde art groups from 1909. In the 1910s he travelled in Russia extensively studying icons and lubok, made a trip to Paris and visited Italy to study frescoes publishing books on Russian icons and the links between Russian, Byzantine and European art as a result of his research. Ā He began to paint in an Impressionist manner incorporatingĀ Cubist and Fauvist elements gaining recognition among the art community and collectors. In 1917 Alexis joined the World of Art art group. He became a board member of the Professional Union of Artists and the All-Russian Museums Council and taught at the First State Free Art Studios in Moscow in 1918-1919.
Alexis went to Constantinople at the end of 1919 and moved to Paris to exhibit his works alongside Fernand Leger (1881-1955) at the Salon dāAutomne in 1921. He regularly started to show at the Salon and achieved success with art critiques, commercial galleries and collectors in France and the USA. In 1927-1929 Gritchenko attended the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. He had solo shows in Madrid and Barcelona in 1934 and 1935. A monograph on him was published in 1934 followed by the two successful personal exhibitions in Stockholm and Gothenburg in Sweden in 1937.
In 1947 his work was purchased by the French state for the Musee National dāArt Moderne in Paris. Rene-Jean and Paul Fierens wrote a monograph on Gritchenko in 1948. Artistās retrospectives were held in New York and Philadelphia, the USA in 1958, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France in 1960 and the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Paris in 1962.
Alexis Gritchenko: His Life, His Work was published in Paris in 1964 and the artist had a retrospective exhibition of his works at the Salon dāAutomne on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 1973. His works are present at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, in public fine art museums in Madrid, Strasbourg, Oslo, Philadelphia, Boston, Montreal, the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia and in many important international private collections.
