Michaelio Kikoine’o Tapybinés Poetikos Savitumas
The Originality of Michael Kikoine’S Paintings

Summary/Abstract: Michael Kikoine was one of the most famous painters of Litvak Jewish origin and a contributor to the L’école de Paris. He was born on May 31, 1892 in Rechytsa, Belarus. Kikoine was barely into his teens when he began studying at “Kruger’s School of Drawing’ in Minsk. There he met Chaim Soutine, with whom he would have a lifelong friendship. At age 16 Kikoine and Soutine were studying at the Fine Arts School in Vilnius. In 1911 Kikoine moved to Paris to join the growing artistic community gathering in the Montparnasse Quarter of the city. This artistic community included his friend Soutine as well as fellow Belarus painter, Pinchus Kremegne who also had studied at the Fine Arts School in Vilnius. For a time, the young artist lived at La Ruche while studying at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. In 1914, he married a young lady from Vilnius, Rosa Bunimovitz. The same year Kikoine volunteered in the French army, serving until the end of World War I. After the World War II he returned from Tolouse to Paris where his paintings were primarily nudes, autoportraits, and portraits. In 1958 he moved to Cannes on the Mediterranean coast where he returned to landscape painting until his passing on November 4, 1968. Michael Kikoine had his first exhibition in Paris in 1919 after which he exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne. His work was successful enough to provide a reasonable lifestyle for him and his family, allowing them to spend summers painting landscapes in the south of France. The most notable of landscape paintings is his “Paysage Cezannien,” inspired by the great Paul Cézanne.

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