Michel Sementzeff (1933-2019) - Paysage de neige

PALETTE-KNIFE OIL PAINTING 80X80 EXCELLENT CONDITION

Michel Sementzeff was a French figurative painter and lithographer, born on February 16, 1933, in Boulogne-Billancourt and died on November 29, 2019, in Lisieux.
Michel Sementzeff studied at the École supérieure des arts modernes (ESAM) in Paris before teaching drawing, painting, and window display at the same school for thirty-five years, alongside his painting career, which he began in the late 1950s[1].

A member of the Salon d’automne and the Salon des artistes français, he lived at 27 rue des Pommerets in Sèvres[2] before eventually settling permanently in Saint-Désir-de-Lisieux.

“His still landscapes reveal distant vistas opening onto infinity, where the horizon slips away, swallowed by the sky and merging with the fields and houses. At times, the strong lines of the trees spring forth like bursts of energy, lending rhythm and vitality to the painting. Michel Sementzeff invites us to contemplate a natural world in which the hours seem suspended ‘between dog and wolf’—when day and night hesitate to give way to one another—imbuing it with a sense of mystery, like the anticipation of a revelation. His still lifes, meanwhile, have a more secretive tone, like a minor key, in which the presence of familiar objects becomes an excuse for inventing compositions, textures, and plays of light. Here, one senses that he is, if one may say so, even more of a painter, giving free rein to his creative joy. His figures reveal another facet of his personality; he is drawn to a more theatrical inspiration, leading him further toward the timeless and creating a very personal world in which his imagination takes flight, entirely free. Here he opens a window onto an even more intimate part of his being, like a confidence he shares with us, thus creating a special passage between him and us in an exchange from soul to soul between the one who gives and the one who receives. Michel Sementzeff is one of those few contemporary figurative painters who give art a dimension of eternity.” - Patrice de la Perrière[17