Ivan Kuleff
French (1893-1987)
Ivan Kuleff, a contemporary of Chaïm Soutine and Marc Chagall, was born in Rostov-na-Don in Russia in 1893. He studied at the Moscow Art School under Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin in the 1910s, then at the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg. During the Second World War, a shipment of his paintings was destroyed en route to an exhibition in Brussels when a bomb fell on the train. Misfortune struck again when he immigrated to Paris in 1926 and most of his existing work disappeared in a train accident. Kuleff’s luck changed for the better in the post-war period and he exhibited in Brussels, The Hague, Meudon and Florence. He also exhibited frequently in Paris at the Salon d’Automne and Salon des Indépendants. Kuleff joined the Icon Society in the early 1930s and studied traditional icon-painting with Pimen Sofronov. He painted icons for l’Église de la Présentation de la Très Sainte Mère de Dieu on rue Olivier de Serres and participated in an exhibition of modern icons in 1967.
