Constantin Kluge (1912 - 2003)
BIOGRAPHY
![]() The early years of Constantin Kluge's life were unusually peripatetic. Born in Riga, Latvia, on January 29, 1912, his Russian parents fled the Bolsheviks when he was only seven, emigrating to Manchuria some 4,000 miles away. Kluge's father was drafted into the Tsar's army in 1914 and became a successful member of the Army General Staff. However, his sympathies for the White Russian faction during the civil war (1917-1920) proved a liability as the Communists gained ground. The Kluge family, now with two young sons, arrived in Harbin, Manchuria, in 1920 after a protracted journey from Riga to the east. At that time, Harbin was a fundamentally Russian city that had developed due to the Trans-Siberian Railway's construction. The railway began as an ambitious plan by Tsar Nicholas II to connect the eastern and western regions of the vast Russian Empire. But the rail line had to cross Manchurian territory to reach the Pacific port city of Vladivostok. Through a series of political and financial arrangements, the headquarters for the rail line's construction was established inside Manchuria, on the Sungari River. By 1900, about 5,000 Russians were living in the new city of Harbin. By 1914, the city's Russian population was 40,000, and by 1922, the population had tripled to 120,000 as refugees from the Russian Revolution streamed east.[i] The Kluge family remained in Harbin for about five years, learning to speak Mandarin and recovering from the arduous events of the revolution. The Kluge brothers received their early schooling here. In 1922, their mother died, leaving Constantin and his brother Michel bereft. In 1925, his father moved the family again, this time to Shanghai. There, they lived in the French "concession" (a term used to describe a western colonial enclave within the boundaries of a Chinese city), where Kluge attended the French high school. Although his interest in the arts may have begun earlier, it is clear that Kluge's years in Shanghai introduced him to drawing, painting, and music. He learned to play both the violin and the cello, which helped him pay his bills in later years. After graduation, Kluge's father encouraged him to study architecture, a profession that would build on his passion for art but provide more promising prospects of earning a living. With that goal in mind, the nineteen-year-old set out for the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in June of 1931.[ii] Paris in the 1930s must have been a revelation for Kluge. His knowledge of Western European culture was based on his French education in Shanghai, albeit filtered through the memories of his community's Russian and French emigrés. Perhaps the most exciting event that summer in Paris was the Exposition Coloniale Internationale in the Bois de Vincennes, a world fair showcasing France's colonial territories around the world. Many European nations participated, including Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal. The focus was on France's African, Caribbean, Polynesian, and Southeast Asian colonies, all introducing their European visitors to the architecture, customs, and history of cultures they had never seen before. For Kluge, this must have felt at least a little familiar. Buddhist temples were undoubtedly rather mundane to him. The spectacular African pavilions, however, must have seemed extraordinary, as were the visiting Africans dressed in traditional clothing. As is typical of Paris, there was no shortage of protest either. The Surrealists, in particular, voiced their objections to what they called "the Imperialist Fair of Vincennes". They even created an alternative exposition featuring sculptures from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas so that visitors could encounter the artworks without the hyperbolic exaggeration of the fair.[iii] Regardless of its colonialist rhetoric, however, the Exposition embodied a diversity that echoed Kluge's own heterogenous experiences. In Paris, Kluge would also have encountered the avant-garde architectural community. The esprit nouveau (new spirit) introduced by Le Corbusier's radically modern pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition had broken new ground, both technically and aesthetically. It was embodied by a "new architecture" designed to serve humanity by utilizing the benefits brought about by modern industrial production. In contrast, Kluge would have been immersed in classical Western culture at the École des Beaux-Arts, including architecture, literature, painting, and Greco-Roman sculpture. Even with his education at a French high school, much of this material would probably have been relatively new to him. Although little is known about Kluge's years at the École, he seems to have worked diligently at his architectural studies, graduating in November 1937. Throughout these years, he continued to paint, putting his newfound skills as an architect to good use in creating Parisian cityscapes. He also seems to have received some portrait commissions during these years.[iv] In 1938, he returned to Shanghai after extending his stay in Paris for six months to focus on painting. ![]() Documentation of Kluge's life in Shanghai during World War II is limited. The war curtailed his architectural practice, depending on painting for income instead. During these years, he married Tania de Liphart, who gave birth to their son, Michel, in Shanghai. In 1942, Kluge also met Pierre Leroy, a Jesuit priest and biologist who served as director of the Geobiological Institute of Peking. Both men were attending a lecture by the well-known Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the archaeologists involved in the Peking Man excavation (homo erectus pekinensis) who cofounded the Geobiological Institute with Leroy.[v] The following spring, Kluge met Teilhard de Chardin while painting the portraits of the Vichy government's ambassador to China and his wife. The two men remained friends until the priest's death in April 1955. The early 1940s were both pleasant and productive for Kluge despite the political upheaval caused by war. By 1946, however, the situation changed as the Communist forces of Mao Zedong pressed farther south in China. Along with thousands of other refugees, Kluge and his family fled to Hong Kong, where he again took up architecture. His friends Leroy and Teilhard de Chardin were also forced out of China during the revolution, but the three men continued to correspond regardless of where they were living and working. In 1950, Kluge decided to leave Hong Kong for Paris. He and Tania de Liphart divorced, later marrying Mary Regina Malcolm. She was the daughter of Canadian missionaries Kluge may have met initially in Shanghai. He renewed contact with her in New York City when her then-husband, Neil Starr (founder of AIG), commissioned Kluge to paint her portrait. After leaving Starr, Mary relocated to Paris, where she resumed her interest in painting and eventually married Kluge.[vi] The exact duration of the marriage is uncertain, but it seems to have lasted for at least a decade. Shortly after he arrived in France, Kluge made his official debut at the annual Salon. He joined the Société des Artistes Français and became a full-time painter. In 1961, he received a silver medal at the Salon and the Raymond Perreau prize awarded by the Taylor Foundation. In 1962, he won a gold medal. Kluge's paintings during his first decade in Paris were frequently based on street scenes and urban landmarks. Some paintings suggest he was studying the work of Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. An undated work titled Golden Poplars is clearly based on Monet's poplar series from the 1890s. The 1963 painting Les pommiers echoes Van Gogh's studies of apple trees from the 1880s. Like most artists, this exploration of past styles led Kluge to develop his own visual style. The Boulevard Montparnasse from 1960, for example, has all the freshness of Impressionism but is integrated into a confidently drawn urban landscape of fully rendered three-dimensional buildings. Kluge had clearly created a visual vocabulary that reflected his own perspectives. In 1964, the painter became a French citizen and settled into a successful career. He was represented by a gallery on rue Saint-Honoré where his work sold well. He began exhibiting his work in the United States, especially at the Wally Findlay Galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. A delightful painting titled Indian Summer, près de Chicago dates from around 1978, suggesting that Kluge must have been in that city during the autumn. Part of this image's charm is that it doesn't depict the skyscrapers of the early modernists or the famous houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. Instead, Kluge gives us a typical "Chicago bungalow" surrounded by tall elm trees. Perhaps it was a friend's home.[vii] ![]() In his later years, Kluge settled contentedly into the small village of Montlognon, about twenty miles northeast of Paris. There, he continued his work and eventually began to write an autobiography. According to his third wife, Suzy, he was inspired to begin collecting images and stories of his life shortly after the death of a favorite cousin, the Russian writer Youri Guerman, in 1967. The book was published some twenty years later, in 1987, when the painter was seventy-five.[viii] Throughout these years, Kluge also maintained his close friendship with Pierre Leroy, who retired to the Lycée Prive Sainte Genevieve at Versailles in 1971. Until his death in 1992, Leroy and Kluge regularly visited each other. Three years after publishing his autobiography, Kluge was honored with the Legion of Honor medal from President François Mitterand at the Elysée Palace. The city of Senlis followed suit a year later, presenting Kluge with the Grand Medal of the City. Senlis is close to the village of Montlognon, where Kluge was living. Constantin Kluge died on January 16, 2003, two weeks shy of his ninety-first birthday. Thérèse de Saint Phalle, a journalist and friend of the artist, wrote of him: "Kluge captures beauty because he pierces the invisible harmony of things. He gives [us] confidence in the future of the human race. He has the power to seize the ineffable. This is called love, the mysterious cosmic force that each of his paintings elusively conveys."[ix]
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