“I create non-figurative art based on nature, or rather on life, and always in harmony with life.” – André Lanskoy

The son of Count Lanskoy, the young André Lanskoy was nevertheless drawn to painting and, above all, to colour relationships. Arriving in Paris in 1921, he befriended the Russian painters of the École de Paris and began attending classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His other training took place in the galleries of Rue La Boétie and the Louvre, where he studied Velázquez, El Greco, the Italian primitives and the Venetians.

From 1937 onwards, his growing interest in the works of Klee and Kandinsky gradually led him to move away from the object, with which he broke in 1941.

In 1945, another encounter took place, that of Nicolas de Staël who, having seen the paintings of his compatriot and elder at J. Bucher's, asked to meet him. This was the beginning of a deep friendship, giving rise to working ties that united the two artists until Staël's death in 1955. Their parallel research showed obvious affinities at that time, and Lanskoy's influence cannot be denied. The Galerie Louis Carré, which presented artists from the École de Paris (Picasso, Matisse, Vuillard, Rouault and, after the war, Robert Delaunay, Jacques Villon, Estève, Kupka, Hartung, Soulages, de Staël), began to show his work in group exhibitions as well as in solo shows. The opening of a branch in New York allowed the school to gain international recognition. In 1952, his second monographic exhibition took place at Carré, featuring Expansion du Printemps.

Expansion du Printemps presents the main characteristics of Lanskoy's work: rigorous construction underpinned by drawing (the importance of the sketches preceding each canvas) to which colour is subjected. A dominant colour within a luxuriant palette, whose vividness is reinforced by superimposed values. The light then clings to the roughness or parallel lines made in the material.