Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Larionov was born in 1881 in Tiraspol, Russian Empire. In 1898 he attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan and Valentin Serov, and was suspended three times for his radical outlook. Early in his career, Larionov worked in Impressionism, but after travelling to Paris in 1906 he shifted his style to Post-Impressionism and then to a Neo-primitive style influenced by Russian sign painting. In 1908 he staged the Golden Fleece exhibition in Moscow, which included paintings by international avant-garde artists such as Matisse, Derain, Braque, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Larionov later produced group shows which included work by Tatlin, Chagall and Malevich. Larionov then became influenced by Cubo-Futurism, and in 1913 he was a founder of the Rayonism art movement, the first Russian abstract art. He left Russia for Paris in 1915 to work with Sergei Diaghilev on productions of the Ballets Russes, and spent the rest of his life in France. Mikhail Larionov died in 1964, in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. In 2007, a large still life by Larionov sold at Sotheby's London for 2,000,000 Euros.