'Standing Girl' by Grégoire Michonze, 1945, École Des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne De Troyes

Description

Signed lower right, 'Michonze' for Gregoire Michonze, also known as Gregoire Michonznic (Russian-French, 1902-1982) and dated 1945.

Grégoire Michonze (Michonznic) … more Signed lower right, 'Michonze' for Gregoire Michonze, also known as Gregoire Michonznic (Russian-French, 1902-1982) and dated 1945.

Grégoire Michonze (Michonznic) was born into a Jewish family in Kishinev (Bessarabia) in the Russian Empire (now the Republic of Moldova) and studied at the local art school, where he learned to paint traditional icons in tempera, before going on to study at the Academy in Bucharest. In 1922, he travelled to Paris via Greece, Istanbul and Marseilles, a journey which strongly influenced his later landscape painting. In Paris he entered the École des Beaux-Arts where he met Max Ernst who later introduced him to the Surrealists, notably André Breton, Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon. Michonznic attended their meetings at the café Cyrano, but never was part of the group- he was too independent to be in tune with Breton’s authoritative character.

Concerning this period, he was to write, in 1959:
"I was impressed by surrealism at it's birth. I was present. I was young and so were they. I may have painted surrealistically for a year or two in the late twenties, but I resolutely turned to life, to reality around 1930, and never left it. I insist that art is linked forever with life. And poetry in painting matters more than painting itself. (...) Soutine is strong reality, seen by a fierce poet. It is distorted, but is according to nature and to life, always."

In 1924, Michonznic met Soutine with whom he developed a strong friendship. In 1927, Michonznic started signing 'Michonze'. He met Henry Miller at this time and established a long lasting friendship. By the early 30`s, Michonze moved away from the mainstream Surrealist path and resolved to follow his own style moving to the south, firstly to Cagnes-sur-Mer and then Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Between 1934 and 1936, Michonze exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendants, creating elaborate compositions, which he later described as "Surreal naturalism". In 1937 he moved to New York and Massachusetts, marrying the Scottish artist Una Maclean on his return to France.

During the Second World War, Michonz enlisted in the French artillery and was taken prisoner in June 1940 and held until December 1942 in Stalag XC at Nieburg-on-Weser, 60 km from Bremen in Germany. His wife, Una, remained in Paris in order not to lose contact with Michonze and was subsequently imprisoned in several French camps, between January and August 1941, where she continued to receive her husband's letters from Germany. He returned to Paris after his release.

The Arcade Gallery in London gave Michonz his first UK show in 1946 and in 1948 he lived in both England and Scotland and exhibited in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He showed in Britain again, including as part of the mixed show 'Recent Trends in Realist Painting' at the ICA in 1952, as well as the USA and Israel after his first Paris exhibition in 1953. In 1970 he travelled to Venice and Rome on a painting tour. The Musée d'Art Moderne in Troyes held a major retrospective of his work in 1985.

Reference:
E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 9, page 598-599; Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Hans Vollmer, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 3, page 387; et al. less