The Russian From Belfort
	Quantity in Basket: none Code: ISBN-9820201004 Price: $10.00 Author: Marie Claude Teissier-Landgraf Country: Oceania Date Published: 1995 Publisher: Institute of Pacific Studies Pages: 105 Paperback: yes Illustrated: yes Index: yes
	Quantity:
The author looks at the thirty seven year journey by painter Nicolai Michoutouchkine in Oceania. Nicolai Michoutouchkine, artist, has wrought a distinctive career and won world-wide recognition from a small piece of land alongside the lagoon In Port-Vila, Vanuatu. When Nicolai was a child, a friend of Matisse told him: You are like a horse which gallops across the steppes. Colour holds no terrors for you. Your drawings are exactly the style of the Great fair of Nishni Novgorod. Later on, the French press ran a story: -Twenty-three-year-old French student leaves for Calcutta without a penny in his pocket. He hitch-hiked widely in the Near and Far East - a modern troubador in search of an inner truth. This artistic and spiritual quest - interrupted in 1957 by compulsory military service - evolved further into long and eventful voyaging through the vast expanse of the South Pacific at a time when unpredictable landfalls by boat set the tempo of island life. Why all these travels? Nicolal Michoutouchkine is fascinated by Pacific Islander works of art: he wants to preserve the cultural evidence of a past seemingly doomed to disappear and be forgotten. This highly talented painter has been a fireless pilgrim - a dedicated ambassador. He has spent 37 years sharing his fabulous personal collection in countries all over the world. Already millions of people have visited more than 100 exhibitions. None of this implies that a passion for collecting has stifled Michoutouchkine’s main vocation. He likes to recall.. I am, above all else a painter. All these objects d'art and travels have enriched my painter's universe by renewing my inspiration. In his paintings, simple line and sharp colour, with an absence of spatial enclosure, give his subject matter a spellbinding serenity. The key to these paintings on fabric is his unquenchable spiritual thirst, which leads him to unfold passages of infused sacred colour, bringing us peace and healing. Often he provokes us: his peculiar genius invades us; he disturbs our composure by sharing his insights - the Illuminating confidential secrets of an artist.