Serge Gladky Biography

Serge Gladky (1880s-1952) was born in the Poltava region in Ukraine. He studied in St Petersburg and, in 1924-26, published the magazine ‘Umeni Slovanu’ (‘Slavic Art’) based in Czechoslovakia. 

After 1924, he lived in France, where he started an “art and advertising decorating business” according to Anna Ermolaeva, his biographer. During or just before World War II, he returned to Ukraine, and his fate has been generally unknown since then. According to Ermolaeva, he was sent to the Gulag in 1945 for “anti-Soviet activities” and died in the far north in 1952.

Gladky published his works using the pochoir (stencil) technique popular in France at the time, employing ornamental and geometric patterns often inspired by nature and animals. Colourful pochoirs had to be printed in a limited number of copies to maintain the brightness of colour, so they command high prices today due to their rarity.