Les avant-gardes à Paris

The exhibition also presents some important works from the interwar period. The Abstraction-Création collective, founded in particular by Auguste Herbin, defined a non-figurative approach through the abstraction and geometrisation of forms. In the aftermath of the war, the Parisian scene seemed to split in two: on one side those pursuing the path of geometric abstraction, and on the other, renewal, with a generation of artists ready to embark upon the experiments of informal art.

In this perspective of an informal dialogue, the gallery presents the great abstract painters of the 1950s. All radically focused on free expression, the artists redefined the pictorial craft: scratches, drips, impasto, or scrapings became tools, methods of attacking the painted surface.

The intelligent staging of the exhibition provides a panorama of the great Matterist and gestural experiments: the signs of Gérard Schneider, the writings of Hans Hartung, the landscaping of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Geer van Velde, Jean-Paul Riopelle’s Matterism, the constructions of Serge Poliakoff, the folds of Simon Hantaï and Pierre Soulages’s balck, monumental creations.

The vogue of these artistic currents and movements lasted only for a time, but they have remained influential to this day.