Léopold Surnage whose real name is Léopold Sturzwage (1879-1968) is a Russian painter and poet.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow where he rubbed shoulders with Larionov and Malevich.
An encounter determines his career, that of the famous Russian collector, Shchukin, who was a fan of Manet, Gauguin and Matisse.
He moved to Paris in 1908, the City of Lights gave him two things: an artistic education under the leader of Fauvism (that of Matisse), as well as an Impressionist inspiration (that of Cézanne).
A fervent friendship with Guillaume Apollinaire opened the doors of the Baroness of Oettingen's circle to him, coupled with a close relationship with Pablo Picasso and Sonia Delaunay.
Léopold Surnage superimposes on this Cubist heritage a Surrealist trend, as well as a Classicism from the Ballets Russes.
He is a founding member of the Golden Section with Gleizes, Braque and Archipenko.
Léopold Surnage paints very colorful canvases, figurative and symbolic compositions, where he abolished the rules of traditional perspective: the characters are schematized and, most often, located in an urban environment.
Between 1925 and 1932, Léopold Surnage made several stays in Collioure, a Mediterranean port where Matisse and Derain, a few years earlier, produced some of the masterpieces of Fauvism.
He then moved away from the Cubism and Abstraction of his beginnings.
The light and architecture so characteristic of the city determine its paintings.
In Collioure, he revisits the myth of the Mediterranean woman who is in turn a carrier, a fish merchant, dreaming at the window... works through which Survage brings back ancient tragedy and allegories.
Léopold Surnage will explore various artistic fields, including the creation of fabrics for Chanel and the production of religious works.
In 1937, he made monumental panels for the Exposition des Arts et Techniques in Paris.
Apollinaire welcomes this mastery:” Nobody knew how to put an entire city with the interiors of its houses before him in a single canvas.”