The opening on January 25 welcomed 70 visitors, including fans of the artist and members of the Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff association and the painter’s family.
Laura Baudart, deputy mayor of Gif-sur-Yvette in charge of Cultural Affairs, inaugurated the exhibition, recalling in her speech “the exceptional character of this sublime exhibition whose works are vibrant with color”. “What especially caught our attention,” she said, “is that Tarkhoff settled a few kilometers from Gif, in Orsay, and immortalized the landscapes of our beautiful Chevreuse Valley.”
Claudine Rousseau, president of the association Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff, thanked the town hall of Gif-sur-Yvette and Val Fleury for organizing this exhibition. She particularly thanked her brother Serge, “the only and first to be interested in this grandfather who was known but who was unknown to us, my mother having moved away from her family”. “Serge initiated this great adventure through his curiosity, his energy, his passion, his perseverance in the service of the art of Nicolas Tarkhoff.” She also thanked Guy Abot without whom “nothing could have been done without his energy, his enthusiasm and his skills”, and Marine Ieva-Abot, researcher of the Nicolas Tarkhoff Committee, “for her very effective collaboration, her energy at the service of the association and for her historical research, which took her to Russia, on this great artist about whom we, her own family, knew so little.
Guy Abot, scientific curator of the exhibition, recalled that “this exhibition followed various international exhibitions initiated since 1983 by the Musée du Petit Palais in Geneva, notably in 2003 in the famous State Tretyakov Gallery, the largest museum in Moscow. This shows the importance of Nicolas Tarkhoff. » He recalled that Nicolas Tarkhoff placed his art within the movement of the post-impressionist Avant-garde. He trained in 1897 in the workshop of Constantin Korovin, the leader of impressionism in Russia. Encouraged by him to exhibit in Moscow, he was noticed by the art critic Sergei Glagol “for his new way of painting”. “While he could have had a brilliant career in Russia, he preferred to settle in Paris, which for several decades had become the international center of artistic creation. » Guy Abot continued his brief presentation with a stylistic analysis of the first works, produced and exhibited in 1901 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, including “Mi-Carême”, a work that he describes as expressionist through the abstraction of forms and bright colors that come alive on the canvas in vibrant touches. “Tarkhoff asserted that colors should construct shapes. He and these Avant-garde artists, breaking with the academies, considered nature, no longer as an object of art, but as a place where their own subjective impulse was exercised, that is to say they painted not what they saw, but what they felt. »
The exhibition (free entry) continues until April 7 from Tuesday to Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
