Description

Who doesn't love a regal lion? This guy was carved in Paris by Serge Ponomarev in 1958, and is probably one of the few sculptures he completed before he began concentrating more and more on painting. Although the subject matter -- a lion -- is a traditional one, his take on it is modern, with his almost geometrical approach to the lion's form and face.

Details

• Serge Ponomarev (Belarussian/French, 1911-1984)
• Untitled, Reclining lion
• Carved marble
  
• Signed and dated in base
  
• 16" x 6" x 9 1/2" 
  

About the Artist

Serge Ponomarev was a painter, draftsman, engraver and sculptor who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1911. He began his art studies at the School of Fine Arts in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 1931. In Paris in 1932, Ponomarev studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and in the workshops of sculptors Louis-Henri Bouchard, Marcel Gaumont, and Raoul Lamourdieu. He returned to Vilnius for a number of years and returned to Paris in 1944 permanently, where he was the subject of solo exhibitions in 1957, 1964, 1966 and 1978. He also exhibited in group shows at the Salon des Indépendants and at the Tuileries. Up until the 1950s he produced mainly marble sculptures and after the late 1950s he concentrated mostly on painting. He also had a very productive career as an engraver of medals, some of which are held in the collection of the Carnavalet Museum in Paris.  

Ponomarev won awards for sculpture and medal design, and in 1978 received the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen (Germany), which is awarded every five years to a painter or graphic artist who occupies an outstanding position in European art due to his or her pioneering life's work. He also won a number of medals including from the La Société Académique Arts-Sciences-Lettres in 1968 and 1969 and from Le Mérite et le Dévouement Français in 1980. Ponomarev died in 1984.