SOLOJOFF Dan

Daniil Andreevich SOLOJEF, (born 27 February 1908 in Saint Petersburg, Paris, France) is a Russian poet, painter and illustrator who was born in Paris on 21 October 1994. Dan Solojoff is from a family of doctors. He left Russia in 1920 and first stayed in Bessarabia. In 1944 he was deported with his wife to a hard labour camp in Germany. From 1945 to 1960, he settled in Lyon. Then, from 1960, he lived in Paris. He died on 21 October 1994 in Paris. He is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois (Essonne). An eclectic artist, his pictorial work (oil or gouache), without ties to any school, has characteristics close to surrealism and neo-primitiveism dear to Marc Chagall whom he met in Cannes in 1962. Jean-Pierre Delarge described him as "an elliptical and symbolistic watercolourist who sometimes takes over the transparency system in Picabia". For Jerzy Waldemar Jarocinski, says Waldemar-George, "its phosphorescent tints […] gradually seal unity and generate harmony. If the pattern: bird of fire or siren, is a leading thread, the rate of chromatic values appears as the major reason for his pictorial poems […]. Solojoff's works betrayed a Slavic painter, a French educationalist. Beginning in 1957, he began, in parallel, a career as an illustrator, which was translated into numerous works, including those of Baudelaire, Verlaine, La Bible, etc. He himself edited some of his books.