1883 -1941 · Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Russian avant-garde

Countless cells, crystalline faces and organic growth make Pavel Filonov the founder of analytical art.

Pavel Filonov was born in Moscow in 1883 and died in Leningrad in 1941. Coming from a modest background, he worked young as a painter, trained in private workshops then attended the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg as a free auditor. In 1910 he joined the Youth Union, participated in futuristic experiments and soon developed a radically personal method. For Filonov, a work should not be constructed from the general to the detail: each tiny unit must be worked until it grows from the inside, like a living cell. He calls this process analytical art and compares the brush to a microscope. Heads transform the portrait into a network of facets, of looks and interlocking shapes. Petrograd's formula of the proletariat refuses direct illustration to condense city, crowd and historical energy. Peasant family, known as The Holy Family, mixes archaism, spirituality and social harshness, while The German War fragments the conflict into organic matter. Filonov founded the group of Masters of Analytical Art in 1925 and taught many students to the German War. Hostile to the market, he wanted to preserve his work as a whole intended for the State. Marginalized under socialist realism, he wanted to preserve his work as a whole intended for the State. Hostile to the market, he wanted to preserve his work as a whole intended for the State. Marginalized under socialist realism, he died of hunger during the siege of Leningrad; his sister will preserve his work, which is now largely preserved at the Russian Museum. The "Pavel Filonov" selection notably compares Heads and Formula of the Proletariat of Petrograd. His reading favors details.

Filonov makes the picture grow from the inside: every cell is completed, every detail thinks and the whole becomes a historical organism.