Léopold Survage

Léopold Frédéric Léopoldowitsch Survage (French pronunciation: [leɔpɔl(d) syʁvaʒ]; 31 July 1879 – 31 October 1968) was a Russian-French painter of Finnish origin.

Trained in Moscow, he identified with the Russian avant-garde before moving to Paris, where he shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani and experimented with abstract films.

Survage was French,[1] of Russian-Danish-Finnish descent, born in Lappeenranta, Finland (with selected references indicating a birthplace of Moscow, Russia).

Introduced to the modern movement through the collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, he cast his lot with the Russian avant-garde and, by 1906, was loosely affiliated with the circle of the magazine Zolotoye runo (Golden fleece—see also Maximilian Voloshin).

The couple eventually settled in Paris where Survage worked as a piano tuner and briefly attended the short-lived school run by Henri Matisse.

He was perhaps influenced by commissions for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, beginning with sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky's opera buffa Mavra at the Paris Opéra in 1922.