Oleg Goudcoff was born in 1926 to Russian parents in Fontaine sur-Isère and died in 2015 in Paris. He spent 80 years of his life drawing, painting or sculpting. Very young he was already a virtuoso in drawing and painting. He refused to pursue engineering studies and returned to the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1946, architecture section then sculpture in the Marcel Gimond studio. He was exiled without trial in 1950 for political reasons in East Germany, where he suffered by mistake a year of interrogation by the secret police under house arrest. This manifest error distanced him from the Parisian artistic scene and forever marked his vision of the world. He will finally be rehabilitated in 1955 by France, during these years of exile he continues to study sculpture at the Beaux-Arts in Berlin with Gustav Seitz and in Munich where he is offered a position as professor of sculpture which he refuses. Back in Paris he obtained a studio in the international residence of "Montmartre aux artistes". He is spotted by many galleries for his contemporary abstract sculpture: Galerie Blumenthal, Galerie Claude Bernard and the Galerie Denise Breteau which signs him exclusively and takes his works to New York or Antwerp, makes sales at the National Art Fund Contemporary, sells to renowned collectors... He has also exhibited in many national and international fairs. He frequents the Lalannes, Etienne Martin, Ipousteguy, Jacques Grinberg,... In 1972 he falls out with the art market and decides to leave for the provinces to continue his plastic research work until the end of his days at 89 years old. .. His work is considerable and steeped in a cathartic power that is expressed from drawing to sculpture (carved stone, plaster, terracotta and bronze) through color on all kinds of media (vellum, Japanese paper, crafts, canvas) and materials: Oil, dry pastel, oil pastel, watercolour, charcoal and ink. He will sell until the end of his life to collectors in love with his work, sharing collections with Matisse, Picasso, Giacometti, Calder, Miro, Brauner, Matta, Viera da Sylva, Mathieu, ..
Lydia Harambourg, art historian, ends her article as follows: "Having managed to transfigure space through color and light, Oleg Goudcoff weighs down a sumptuous painting. The poetry that emanates from it suspends time and allows our imagination an escape that makes no concessions to fashion. The artist has found the path to his freedom". A renaissance of his work is taking place today through private exhibitions in Paris and a selection of works for an acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in progress. His daughter, Sophie Alexinsky, the sole beneficiary, actively takes care of the recognition of his work by cultural institutions.
