Large-Scale Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting by Paul Kallos (1928–2001)

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A commanding work, this large-scale oil on canvas, titled PEINTURE, is a striking example of post-war Abstract Expressionism. Rendered in … Read more A commanding work, this large-scale oil on canvas, titled PEINTURE, is a striking example of post-war Abstract Expressionism. Rendered in a richly textured impasto technique, the composition pulses with energy and emotional depth. Kallos employs a sophisticated palette of earthy browns, deep reds, and black, punctuated by luminous flashes of pale yellow, white, and a ghostly blue-green that anchors the central vertical form—possibly evoking a figure or shaft of light.

Gestural and layered, the painting invites interpretation: perhaps a crowded interior or urban scene in motion, or simply an emotional landscape expressed through color and form. The thick, dynamic brushstrokes and confident abstraction reflect Kallos’s mastery of his medium and his affiliation with the second School of Paris, particularly the Lyrical Abstraction movement.

This rare and powerful painting is ideal for collectors of mid-century European abstraction and would make a dramatic focal point in any contemporary or modern interior.

Signed lower right.

Dimensions:
63.75ʺW × 2ʺD × 45ʺH (including the frame). The frame is wrapped in 14 karat gold leaf.

Paul Kallos (1928–2001) was a Hungarian-born, French-based abstract painter whose life and work were shaped by exile, resilience, and postwar modernism. Born in Hernádnémeti, Hungary, he began drawing in 1938 during a prolonged illness in his childhood. His early education was interrupted by World War II, and in 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz by the Nazi regime, where nearly all of his family perished.

After returning to Hungary in 1945, Kallos entered the Budapest School of Fine Arts in 1946. Influenced by his close friend Georges Feher, he explored surrealism and geometric abstraction. In 1949, amid the tightening grip of Stalinism, Kallos and Feher secretly fled Hungary, spending a year in a refugee camp near Salzburg in the French zone of Austria.

Kallos ultimately settled in Paris as a political refugee, living near Place Clichy and working on an intimate scale while supporting himself with part-time work. He immersed himself in the study of Old Master paintings at the Louvre and, in 1952, began sharing a studio with Quebec artist Raymond Goden. He became a French citizen in 1974.

From 1951 onward, Kallos was a regular participant in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles through 1983. In 1954, his work was noticed by influential dealer Pierre Loeb, who represented him and introduced him into a circle that included Vieira da Silva, Árpád Szenes, Lanskoy, Riopelle, Zao Wou-Ki, and Wilfredo Lam. Following Loeb’s death, Kallos exhibited with Galerie Pierre Domec and later Galerie Nane Stern over several decades.

Internationally active throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Kallos exhibited in London, Turin, New York, Basel, and Toronto. In 1986, he was included—alongside Victor Vasarely and other Hungarian émigré artists—in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Budapest.

Today, Paul Kallos’s work is held in major institutional collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and Dijon, the Denver Art Museum, and museums in Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Eindhoven, Rehovot, and Metz. See less