Serge Charchoune Russian, 1888-1975

Like the title of his magazine "Transbordeur", which he founded in 1921, Serge Charchoune eludes the boundaries and linear narrative of twentieth-century modernism. Arriving in Paris in 1912, Charchoune joined Henri Le Fauconnier's studio, shortly after the Cubist scandal of 1911. During the war, he crossed the Spanish border, as did Sonia Delaunay, Marie Laurencin and Albert Gleizes. It was in Spain that he made his first contacts with the Dada group, notably Francis Picabia and the poet-boxer Arthur Cravan. It was in this way that Charcoune managed to "bury cubism" in 1920 in the pages of Dada publications, a powerful symbolic act. In 1921, he was one of the artists and writers who signed Picabia's Oeil cacodylate.

 

Nonetheless, Charchoune carried with him the vast ornamental and folk tradition of his native Russia, as well as the Spanish folk art he discovered on his travels. With the essoufflement of Dada, Charchoune returned to the sources of his art, while reinterpreting them. He passed the purism of Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, pushing simplification and stripping down to their goal. From the 1940s onwards, he created a more ornamental, highly symbolic form of Cubism. His works became increasingly colourful, in a search for formal and chromatic rhythm.