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Michel Kikoine born May 31, 1892 in Rechytsa,
Belarus - died November 4, 1968 in Cannes, France,
was a painter.

The gifted son of a banker in the small
south-eastern town of Rechytsa in Belarus, Michel
Kikoine was barely into his teens when he began
studying at "Kruger's School of Drawing" in Mensk.
There he met Chaim Soutine, with whom he would
have a lifelong friendship. At age sixteen he and
Soutine were studying at the Fine Arts School in
Vilnius|Vilnia and in 1911 he moved to join the
growing artistic community gathering in the
Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. This
artistic community included his friend Chaim
Soutine|Soutine as well as fellow Belarus painter,
Pinchus Kremegne who also had studied at the Fine
Arts School in Vilnia.

For a time, the young artist lived at La Ruche
while studying at  the École des Beaux-Arts|Ecole
Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. In 1914, he
married a young lady from Vilnia with whom he
would have a daughter and a son. Their son, Jankel
Jacques, born in France in 1920, also became a
painter. The same year as his marriage, Kikoine
volunteered to fight in the French army, serving
until the end of World War I.

Michel Kikoine had his first exhibition in Paris
in 1919 after which he exhibited regularly at the
Salon d'Automne. His work was successful enough to
provide a reasonable lifestyle for him and his
family allowing them to spend summers painting
landscapes in the south of France, the most
notable of which is his "Paysage Cezannien,"
inspired by the great Paul Cezanne.

With the outbreak of World War II and the
subsequent occupation of France by the
Germany|Germans, Michel Kikoine and his Jewish
family faced deportation to the Nazi death camps.
Until the end of the War they stayed near
Toulouse. After the Allied liberation of France,
he moved back to Paris where his paintings were
primarily nudes, autoportraits, and portraits. In
1958 he moved to Cannes on the Mediterranean coast
where he returned to landscape painting until his
passing on November 4, 1968.

In 2001, at the university in Tel Aviv, Israel, a
new wing in the Genia Schreiber University Art
Gallery, was dedicated to the memory of Michel
Kikoine.