Léon Zack

Lev Vasilyevich Zak , gallicised and primarily known in Western sources as Léon Zack (1892–1980), was a Russian-born French figurative and later abstract painter and sculptor. He has been described as a School of Paris painter. Zack was also a Russian-language Futurist poet using the pseudonyms Khrisanf and M. Rossiyansky.

Biography Léon Zack was born into a Jewish family in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia on 12 July 1892, to a pharmacist father; by his mother, he was half-brother of the philosopher Semyon Frank. He was an illustrator, painter, designer and sculptor. He has been described a School of Paris painter. He was painting at the age of 13 and exhibiting his work by 15, being a pupil of Jakimchenko from 1905 to 1907. Whilst studying literature at the University of Moscow, he took painting and drawing classes at private academies where he studied under post-Impressionists such as Mashkov. Whilst in Berlin, he designed costumes and sets for the Ballets Romantiques Russes. He lived at Villefranche-sur-Mer during World War II. By 1947, he was back in Paris designing sets for the Opéra-Comique and in the 1950s he designed stained glass windows, including for Notre Dame des Pauvres at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Around this time Zack's work abandoned figuration for geometrical abstraction, gradually moving toward a more expressive mode of Tachisme. He had exhibitions of such abstract works at the Galerie Kléber in 1955 and 1957.

Selected exhibitions

from 1923: Salon d’Automne, Paris 1928: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1935: Galerie Wildenstein, Paris 1946: Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris 1959: Waddington Galleries, London 1976: Léon Zack, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris 1988: Léon Zack retrospective: 1892-1980, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, Orléans 2009: Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris