Pierre Dmitrienko was born in Paris in 1925 to a Russian father and a Greek mother. He will also be raised in his father's language. Shortly after the war, he studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He began painting in 1944 (seascapes, portraits and landscapes) and became friends with young painters (François Arnal, Serge Rezvani). Dmitrienko gave up architecture and then made a living from some food activities.
In his first period of creation, the young artist underwent some influences from Albert Gleizes, and through him from Cubism. He discovered Paul Klee. Over time, he participated in numerous group exhibitions; we must place his real beginnings from 1948, the year when he was part of the group of “Mains éblouies” at the Galerie Maeght (Rezvani, Jacques Lanzmann, Raymond Mason, Baudinière, Signovert, Thompson), a group which then brought together most of the young abstract painters from Paris.
Pierre Dmitrienko participates in Parisian salons (Salon de Mai, Réalités Nouvelles from 1957) and international group exhibitions. The artist will reap an impressive harvest of distinctions and prizes.
In a second period (1950-60), Dmitrienko expressed, in a great diversity of themes, a completely romantic joy of painting; he seeks to capture the light and psychological climate of places from which he draws inspiration, landscapes where he lives, landscapes brought back by his memory. In 1960, Dmitrienko acquired an engraving press from which more than two hundred works were produced. He began sculpting in 1965.
In a final period (from 1962), the artist, coming from an absolute lyricism, commits his art to extreme austerity. With this last period, Dmitrienko “manifested the duty to bear witness to his horror in the face of the atrocities of a world that, with all his nature, he would have wanted to be happy,” writes Jacques Busse.
Pierre Dmitrienko died in 1974; he is not yet 50 years old