AUTO PORTRAIT III (1983) Painting by Michel Moskovtchenko

Michel Moskovtchenko is a painter, sculptor, draughtsman and engraver born in Tarare (France) on January 6, 1935. Of Russian descent by his father, and French by his mother, a pianist and painter graduated from Springfield College (Massachusetts), Michel Moskovtchenko, if he was born in Tarare, knew until 1947 in Violay (Loire) "a happy childhood, surrounded by art books and music", in a countryside already mountainous. From elementary school, the Freinet method allowed him to engrave his first linocuts illustrating the school newspaper. After studying at the Modern and Technical College of Tarare, he worked as a draughtsman in a silk drawing workshop. At the same time, he attended the apprenticeship and evening classes of Louis Charrat and Pierre Pelloux at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon.

Between 1954 and 1956, Michel Moskovtchenko travels to the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia where he devotes himself to the study of the masters of engraving in museums. In 1960, he moved to the Luberon (France), where he initially worked mainly in drawing, but later became interested in engraving, in particular etching, which he began to work on in 1961 with the German painter and engraver Hans Hermann Steffens, who lived in the neighboring village of Gordes. His first solo exhibition was held in Lyon in 1961. 

Michel Moskovtchenko made several other very important trips: Sicily, Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sweden... These trips inspired him to create a large canvas and a series of engravings which were presented at the International Contemporary Art Fair in Paris in 1983. Later, he created and animated a travelling intaglio workshop that they installed in various prestigious places: at the Maison de la Culture in Grenoble, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris in 1978. 

For the fascination of the line, the trees, the roots, the stones, the big austere walls, the forests and the arid cliffs which underlie his work, one speaks about him about "artistic geology". Jan de Maere situates Michel Moskovtchenko, with Ivan Theimer, among the leaders in France of the movement of the New subjectivity launched in 1975 by Jean Clair. For Philippe Brunel, "Moskovtchenko's motives finally clarify his state of mind. The trees present with a gnarled trunk the suffocating spectacle of their dry and tangled branches, undulating like lianas, or sometimes sharp as thorns. The same tormented aspect, the same complexity, the same violence can be found in his landscapes traced ruggedly, almost furiously, of stone hills and rare vegetation. There is nothing tranquil, nothing restful, nothing romantic either in these harsh, inhospitable landscapes. The spectator is not far from the sublime, however, when one conceives it as the feeling of smallness and finitude that man feels in front of the spectacle of the non-standard nature".

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1935
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists

The Artist was highlighted in an article in Artmajeur Magazine:

Michel Moskovtchenko: Master of Form, Color, and Narrative