Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing original paintings by Michel Kikoine.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com
Michael Kikoin (also Michel Kikoine) was born in 1892 in Rozitten, Vitebsk region, today's Rezekne, Latvia. He was the son of a Jewish banker in the small southeastern town of Gomel.
He was barely into his teens when he began studying at "Kruger's School of Drawing" in Minsk. There he met Chaim Soutine, with whom he would have a lifelong friendship. At age 16 he and Soutine were studying at the Vilnius Academy of Art and in 1911 he moved to join the growing artistic community gathering in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. This artistic community included his friend Soutine as well as fellow Belarus painter, Pinchus Kremegne who also had studied at the Fine Arts School in Vilnia.
After moving to Paris in 1912, he painted landscapes, still life paintings, portraits, and expressive nudes. He participated in Salon exhibitions since 1914.
He married in 1920 and that same eyar volunteered to fight in the French army, serving until the end of World War I. He has solo shows at the Cheron (1920) and Netter (1924) galleries. He also exhibited at Zborovsky, Bernheim, Billiet-Worms and Ersid galleries in Paris and in New York at the Brummer gallery.
Michel Kikoine exhibited at the Contemporary French Art exhibit in Moscow in 1928 and Ecole de Paris exhibition at the gallery S. Lesnick in Paris. In 1933, he moved to a studio in Montparnasse.
With the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupation of France by the Germans, Michel Kikoine and his Jewish family faced deportation to the Nazi death camps. Until the end of the War they stayed near Toulouse. After the Allied liberation of France, he moved back to Paris where his paintings were primarily nudes, autoportraits, and portraits. In 1958 Michel Kikoine moved to Cannes on the Mediterranean coast where he returned to landscape painting until his death on November 4th, 1968.