Charshun Serge

In 1905, Sharshun entered the Kazan Art School, where, by his own admission, he discovered painting as a “field of delight.” He began to paint “lyrical landscapes,” which later, in adulthood, he called “mystical.” From his merchant father, who categorically opposed his son’s hobby, Sharshun fled to the army, and in 1909 he moved to Moscow, where he found himself among the capital’s artistic bohemia, became acquainted with the latest trends in painting - French Fauvism, German Expressionism - and became their follower. He studied for some time in the Moscow workshop of I. I. Mashkov, under whose influence he wrote his early paintings (“Nude” 1912). Having left Russia in 1911, the artist settled in Paris, Montparnasse. With the outbreak of World War I, Charshun moved to Barcelona, ​​the center of European avant-garde art in 1914–1917. Thus began the very important period of “ornamental cubism” for Charshun’s painting, combining the principles of stained glass and symmetry with a continuous wave-like pattern. Upon his return to Paris in 1919, Charchoun met F. Picabia, T. Tzara and A. Breton and, becoming an apologist for Dadaism, actively participated in group actions of the Dadaists. Under the influence of Ozanfant, Charchoun also became interested in purism, painted still lifes in the spirit of Morandi, and in his “game” “Elastic Landscapes” entered into a kind of roll call with Picabia. In 1922-1923, the artist moved to Berlin, where he began publishing his own magazine, Perevoz-Dada, which was published at intervals and under different names until 1973. Sharshun proved himself not only as an artist, but also as a publicist, poet, and writer. In the 1930s, a crisis began in the artist’s work, largely related to the economic crisis in France. Until 1942, Sharshun did little painting, but developed vigorous literary activity. Sharshun held many personal exhibitions in Europe, the USA, and Canada. The culmination of the artist’s career was a retrospective of his works held by the National Museum of France, the Pompidou Center in 1971. In 2006, a large personal exhibition of Charshun was held at the Museum of Personal Collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and at the same time in the Moscow gallery “Our Artists” his works were presented in the exhibition “Russian Abstraction in France in the Mid-20th Century”. Several of his paintings are on permanent display at the State Tretyakov Gallery, to which the artist bequeathed 31 of his works.