Samson Flexor - Cubist Nude

signed and dated lower right "Flexor 1955"

oil on canvas

39 x 61 cm

DOCUMENTARY DATA

Samson Flexor (1907, Soroca, Bessarabia - 1971, Sao Paulo, Brazil) was the leader and teacher of the school-studio and organization of artists in Sao Paulo known as Atelier Abstração (1951). The Bessarabian-born artist was educated at a private school in Soroca, then at the Odessa Art School and then in Bucharest, where his entire family moved. In 1922-1924 he studied at the Royal Belgian Academy of Fine Arts (Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts) in Brussels and, from 1924, at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris (École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts) with "Lucien Simon"; in Paris, he also attended lectures on art history at the Sorbonne University. He moved in 1948 from France to Brazil, where he immediately began exhibiting his paintings, which at the time demonstrated the influence of the School of Paris. Soon after settling in São Paulo, the artist changed course, and his work reflected geometric abstraction. This change was partly influenced by Flexor's observation of the dizzying pace of growth and development of Sao Paulo as a forward-looking city. His compositions, based on virtual volumes generated by finely modulated color sequences, set the standard for many other abstract artists of the period.

PROVENANCE

• Verdigris Auctions, Cincinnati, USA.