IVAN PUNI, research project

Ivan Puni (Jean Pougny) is a well-known artist, hundreds of authors have written about him. It is all the more surprising that there are still many uncertainties about his work and biography, and some information that was long believed to be true turns out to be false upon verification. One example is the year of Puni's birth. Xenia Boguslavskaya (the artist's wife) indicated 1894 in the catalogues of retrospective exhibitions she held after her husband's death. In the catalogue raisonné, the first volume of which was published by Herman Berninger in 1972, Puni's year of birth is given as 1892. In fact, a Birth certificate we found in one of the St-Petersburg archives shows that Ivan Albertovich Puni was born on 22 March 1890.

Inaccurate data are often found in the attributions of works by (or attributed to) Ivan Puni that are offered at auctions and even from museum collections. Examples include four paintings from the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, for which Puni's authorship was disproved by a study made public by the museum in 2020. It is particularly sad that they were acquired in 1993 with the confirmation of Berninger, the publisher of the catalogue raisonné. Sadly, the art market is littered with FAKE PUNIS that compromise above all his early, most rare and sought-after work.

Thus, there is a need to understand the artistic heritage of Ivan Puni, to separate truth from fiction, and to put things in order. This is the goal of our research project. The most significant research results are published on this website. Little-known BIOGRAPHICAL information about Puni's parents, about his studies at the Nicholas Cadet Corps and about his service as a postal official is given. The details of his work as a professor at the former Academy of Arts and his stay in Vitebsk are revealed.

The MYTHs & FACTS section refutes falsehoods that have become prevalent in the literature as a result of uncritical reprinting.

Attention is paid to the periodisation of Puni's work and its evolution in the St-Petersburg (before 1920), Berlin (1921-1923) and Paris (after 1923) periods. The two-volume CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ of Puni, published in 1972/1992, is critically analysed. Puni's Berlin exhibition at the Sturm Gallery (1921) is analysed from a new point of view.

For completeness, the theoretical TEXTS by IVAN PUNI and a list of his EXHIBITIONS are provided.

The research project is also intended to advise museums, galleries, auction houses and collectors on the AUTHENTITY of Puni's works.

All enquiries are accepted at the address given in the CONTACTS section.