Andre Lanskoy was known for his many abstract works including painting, prints and collages, He did illustrations for The Diary of a Madman, a novel by Nikolai Gogol, but began his career with figurative paintings and still life.

Lanskoy was born in Moscow on March 31, 1902. His family moved to St. Petersburg in 1905 and then to Kiev in 1918. He fought in the Tsarist White Army during the Russian Civil War until he was injured. In 1921 he moved to Paris where he studied painting at the Academie de La Grande Chaumiere.

Lanskoys' success began when Wilhelm Unde took interest of his works at the Salon d' Automne in 1923/1924. In 1925, he held his first solo exhibition in Paris followed by a group exhibition with fellow Russian artist Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Leopold Survage, and Ossip Zadkine. Those early works were inspired by Van Gogh, Matisse and Soutine.

By 1937 Lanskoy had given up figurative painting and began fully painting abstracts. During this time he became friends with Nicolas de Stael and the two held an exhibition in 1948. He subsequently exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Associates, documenta II and the Les Peintres Russes de l'ecole de Paris at the museum of Saint Denis.

Andre Lanskoy died in Paris on August 22, 1976.

Sources:
http://www.andre-lanskoy.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Lanskoy

Born the son of a count, Andrei Mikhailovich Lanskoy joined the tsarist army in 1919 and fought on the Crimean front. In 1921, his family fled to Ukraine, while he himself moved to Paris and studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

His early, figurative works were inspired by the works of his idols Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Chaim Soutine. He made his debut at the ®Salon d'Automne¯ as early as 1923, where he was discovered and promoted by the German art historian, art dealer and collector Wilhelm von Uhde.

A first solo exhibition followed in 1925, and Lanskoy found his way into the circle of Russian artists and soon exhibited successfully with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Leopold Survage, and Ossip Zadkine. Towards the end of the 1930s, he turned increasingly to informal painting, which made him, together with his compatriots Serge Poliakoff, Serge Charchoune and Nicolas de Staël, one of the important representatives of the ®Russian School¯ within the ®Nouvelle École de Paris¯.

His close friendship with Nicolas de Staël led to a joint exhibition in the French metropolis in 1948. This was followed by presentations of his work in Brussels, London, Lausanne, Zurich, Berlin, and New York, as well as participation in documenta II and III in Kassel.

Lanskoy's mature works are dominated by generous areas of color in bright, unbroken hues and by fine pastel tones that are often integrated into a calligraphic framework of lines. In addition to painting, the Russian-born artist also created patterns for tapestries and mosaics as well as an extensive oeuvre of drawings and prints.

André Lanskoy (1902-1976) was born in Moscow. The family fled during the Russian Revolution to Kiev, where Lanskoy learned to paint. In the early 1920s he moved via Berlin to Paris, where he studied from 1921 at the Academia de la Grande Chaumière and took additional lessons with Sergei Jur'evic Sudejkin.

In 1924 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne for the first time, which led him to sign a contract with Louis Carré, who was a well-known representative of the Nouvelle École de Paris. Lanskoy's art was initially influenced by expressionism, the works of Klee and Kandinsky later brought him to abstract painting in the 1940s. André Lanskoy is also among the founders of the lyrical abstraction within the École de Paris.

André Lanskoy was a Russian painter and printmaker who worked in France. He is associated with the School of Paris and Tachisme, an abstract painting movement that began during the 1940s.

Source: Wikipedia