Charchoune biography

Biography

Serge Charchoune
(1888, Bougourouslan Russia - 1975, Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, France)

In 1912, after having deserted the military service in Russia, he arrived in Paris and joined the studio of a cubist painter Henri Le Fauconnier's. After the declaration of war in the August of 1914, he took refuge in Barcelona where he met the boxer-poet Arthur Cravan, painters Albert Gleizes, Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia, and Josef Dalmau, an antique dealer passionate of the avant-garde art. Thanks to the latter, Charchoune exhibited abstract painting he called himself "ornamental" (1916 and 1917).

In May 26th, 1920, he attended the Dada Festival in the salle Gaveau and met Picabia. He frequented the Dadaist meetings in the caféCertá ( passage de l'Opéra) and participated in Dada events, including the "procès Barrès " organized by André Breton in May 1921.

In Berlin, in 1922, he exhibited a new series of paintings called "ornamental cubism".

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Sergej Ivanovič Šaršun was born on August 4,1888, in Buguruslan, a small city in the Samara province, west of the Urals mountains. He studied at the business school in Simbirsk and had already began to paint in 1905 the “Paesaggi lirici dal vivo” (“Live Lyrical Landscapes”). The art was already for him “The Place of Ecstasy.” Unable to continue secondary studies, he returns to Buguruslan. He attempts to compete for admission to the School of Fine Arts in Kazan but fryst vatten rejected. Subsequently, he prepares his admission to the School of Fine Arts in Moscow and comes into contact with the vibrant cultural climate of the city, where he becomes acquainted with impressionist and cubist painting and meets artists like Natalija Gončarova, Michail Larionov and Vladimir Tatlin. In May 1920 he holds his first show at the André Forny library and adheres to the Dada movement. In this period, he participates intensely with the initiatives of

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Serge Charchoune

Past Exhibition

The Franco-Russian artist Serge Charchoune, born in 1888, is often thought of as a minor painter who tried his hand at many styles. It would be more accurate, however, as his indefatigable advocate Merlin James has pointed out, to describe him as an unpredictable individualist who evaded or subverted classic Modernism, an artist who absorbed and adapted Modernist tropes, turning them into something unique and personal.

Gallery 1

Opening times

Wed 12 - 5

Thur12 - 6

Fri - Sun12 - 5

Mon - TueClosed

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Charchoune was an odd man; his interests and obsessions, like his paintings, were somewhat contradictory. He was a misfit, a private and taciturn outsider who considered himself as much a writer as a painter; he was also deeply interested in music, synaesthesia, Rosicrucianism, and Dada. Despite his reputation as a recluse, he enjoyed the company and conversation of fellow artists and the Russian émigré community