Lev Tchistovsky

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Lev Tchistovsky | 1902-1969

          Born in 1902 in Pskov, Russia. Died in Cenevieres, France in 1969. Laureate in 1924 of the Fine Arts Academy of Leningrad with Savinsky and Eberling as professors, he left the Soviet Union in 1925. He studied two years at the R .Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome where he met lrene Klestova who was also studying there. She became his companion until his death. They came both to Paris in 1926, settled there and worked together. Tchistovsky kept out of all the pictorial trends appearing in the twenties between Montparnasse and Montmartre. The art historian Lukomsky called him an authentic resistant of the classical painting. His work and especially his nudes and his large size watercolors attained a remarkable technical perfection. They include portraits of celebrities (HRH the duke of Sevilla for example), nudes, still-lives, mythological scenes, flowers and icons, these last ones being his passion. To paint flowers he had a beautiful garden and a greenhouse where he grew orchids at his summer residence in Cenevieres in the south of France. His paintings were very much in demand by many French, English and American galleries. He was member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts and of the Societe des Artistes Independants since 1930. He participated in many exhibitions of this Societe in the Grand Palais in Paris. His talent earned him the highest honors a Russian painter can get: one of his large size water-colors (Sleeping Girl) and two of his paintings have been accepted by the Russian Museum in Leningrad and another of his paintings (Bathing Girl) by the Tretiakoff Gallery in Moscow. A watercolor of Suzy Solidor can be seen in the castle of Cagnes sur Mer and some other paintings at the museum of Villefranche de Rouergue near Cenevieres.

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