ON THE WAY TO A COLOR RHYTHMS OF LEOPOLD SURVAGE

The idea of the synthesis of music and the color matured in the bowels of the traditional arts - music, painting, musical theater scenography (primarily ballet). Thus, cinematography, already at the very beginning of its development, tried to find its own language based on the understanding of cinema as a kind of "visual music". In these early film experiments, elements of a synthetic art related to cinema – “color music”, appeared, which ultimately led to the possibility of the existence of a special genre - "color and music film ", using cinema production technology to solve the problems of synthesis of music and light.

One of the first known attempts on the way to this is the work of the French artist of Finnish origin Leopold Survage (1879-1968). Survage was one of the pioneers of avant-garde art, and his works are now highly demanded by antique dealers that buy antiques. Survage's work, in addition to being positively estimated by antique valuations, will definitely attract the people who plan to buy antique art of a superior cultural value. His art is visually striking and full of emotions, giving other reasons to buy antique oil paintings of him.

In 1908 Survage came to Paris, and met Ukrainian and American artist Alexander Archipenko, who also tried to experiment in the field of “the color music”. In 1912-1913 Survage created "rhythms in color" – a series of colored abstractions made using the animation method, that were presented in 1917, at the Survage’ first personal exhibition, organized by the famous French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Actually, the “color rhythms” were exhibited at the exhibition of The Georges Pompidou National Centre for Art and Culture (1989).

^{Leopold Survage. Colored Rhythm. 1913. Source: wikiart}

Next to a series of several "frame-by-frame" sketches, the fragment of the text of the Survage manifesto was exhibited, where the artist announced the creation of a new art of color rhythm and rhythmic color, and chose the cinematic film as his tool, as a “true symbol of concentrated movement”. 

Abstract artists Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Gerhard Richter, Germaine Dulac, Oskar W. Fischinger, the authors of the first non-objective and color-musical films, followed Survage and achieved success. It should also be reminded of other kinds of attempts to make abstract painting move - with the help of light projection and scenographic techniques (Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, Robert Delaunay, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Wassily Kandinsky and others).

In contrast to them, L. Survage, due to the outbreak of the World War, could not bring his pioneering ideas to the screen, they have been preserved for us in many museums around the world as a scattered series of "color rhythms" (in total artist prepared about 200 sheets of them). 

The increased interest in L. Survage's "color rhythms" today is quite natural.

^{Leopold Survage. Colorad Rhythm. 1913. Source; wikiart}

The name of Survage is now certainly mentioned in all publications on kinetic art, avant-garde cinema, separate monographs and albums are dedicated to him. His works made a significant contribution to the world of selling antiques and exhibited in the most famous galleries and museums all over the world.

^{Cover image; Leopold Survage. 1913. Source: wikiart}