Michel Kikoïne (Belarusian: Міхаіл Кікоін; Russian: Михаил Кико́ин, Michail Kikóin; 31 May 1892 – 4 November 1968) was a Lithuanian Jewish[1]-French painter who belonged to the Ecole de Paris art movement.
The son of a Jewish banker in the small southeastern town of Gomel, he was barely into his teens when he began studying at "Kruger's School of Drawing" in Minsk.
At age 16, he and Soutine were studying at the Vilnius Academy of Art and in 1911 he moved to join the growing artistic community gathering in the Montparnasse quarter in Paris, France.
[5] This artistic community included his friend Soutine as well as fellow Belarus painter Pinchus Kremegne, who also had studied at the Fine Arts School in Vilnia.
[2] With the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupation of France by the Germans, Kikoine and his Jewish family faced deportation to the Nazi death camps.
His work was successful enough to provide a reasonable lifestyle for him and his family, allowing them to spend summers painting landscapes in the south of France, the most notable of which is his "Paysage Cezannien," inspired by Paul Cézanne.
Kikoïne continued with the evolution of post-Impressionist painting whilst also expressing his own Jewish spirit, as is characteristic of the Ecole de Paris movement.