Biography
Born in 1936, Michel Moskovtchenko had a happy and rustic childhood in the mountains near Lyon. His father, who had Russian origins, was a country doctor. The young boy was soon attracted by drawing and became an appren5ce in a silk workshop to pay his evening classes at the Beaux Arts School. Afer few travels around the world and some intense working periods during which he acquired different new techniques, the young artist settled at the beginning of the sixties in a small stone house and began feeding himself with landscapes. His art works feature in prestigious collections, such as The Elysée's one, and were showed in important exhibitions, such as his solo exhibition in Le Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1978.
Work
In Moskovtchenko artworks, there is first a fascination for lines. The ones given by the bowels of the earth and the ones deployed by trees. As a dreamy but obsessive spectator, the artist creates poetry of drops and rocks. His lines get lost in the branches details and find refuge in their shades. Rooted in the Provence landscapes, his art escapes, however, kitsch and false picturesque subjects. Energy doesn't seem to come from the sky but from the earth. Feminine figures that emerge from his works keep a mineral aspect. Men remain invisible but their presence materializes throughout ochre quarries and dry stonewalls. These patterns of a great graphic beauty seem to explore human vulnerability.
Engraving, oil painting, drawing, drypoint etching, or even sculpture, Moskovtchenko appropriate all the techniques to transcend his subject. Multiform, rich, bewitching, his works inspired a great number of artists, as Charles Juliet.