Fleury Logo

Judit Reigl

1923-2020

Judit Reigl, a painter of Hungarian origin born in 1923 in Kapuvar, fled her country to Paris to become one of the few women to be recognised on the artistic scene after the war. Faithful to a spirit of freedom and carried by a powerful energy in motion, Reigl produced personal work where the questions of the body and the human condition are central.

After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Judit Reigl managed to cross the Iron Curtain and moved to Paris in June 1950. There she met her friend and compatriot Simon Hantaï who introduced her to André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, in 1954, to whom she gave one of her first paintings, Ils ont soif de l’infini (1950), an anguished vision populated by zoomorphic creatures on the run. Seduced by the young painter’s talent, Breton invited her to exhibit at the Galerie de l’Étoile Scellée a few months later and wrote the preface to the catalogue. The works she presented there renounced figuration: always attracted by automatic writing but seeking to take it to its utmost limits, Reigl set out to conquer a new expressive territory, that of a total abandonment of body and mind. “My whole body contributes to the work, ‘with open arms.’ It is with gestures that I write pulsations, impulses, in the given space.”

Over the course of her many series, a coherent path took shape which, despite the many evolutions and the back-and-forth between abstraction and figuration, is marked by an intense gestuality. Reigl painted most often by moving quickly around canvases placed on the ground and intensely engaged her body. Several series were born: those of the Éclatements (1955 – 1958) and of Centres de dominance (1958 – 1959), which brought her closer to Georges Mathieu, with whom she exhibited during these years, then that of the Guano (1958 – 1959), developed on the basis of the failed canvases littering the floor of the studio, covered in paint drips, walked over by the artist who reworked them afterwards.

From 1966, Reigl introduced the human figure into her painting. It appears and disappears through several series such as Homme (1966 – 1972), Drap (1973), Un corps au pluriel (1990 – 1992) or Hors (1993 – 1999). Bodies, most often male, reduced to their simplest expression, devoid of any spatial or temporal context, are represented levitating over the entire surface of the canvas. The human body, as an actor in the gesture and as a subject, therefore remained the anchor of Reigl’s work and of the complex reflection it represents.

Judit Reigl’s career was marked by several important exhibitions: the 1976 exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris with the Déroulements and Guano series and the 1986 exhibition at the International Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Her works have been integrated into the collections of MOMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Tate Modern in London.


Read more

“The body is the most perfect instrument and the most tragic obstacle”

Judit Reigl

Artworks

Judit Reigl

HOMME (fragment), 1969
Oil on canvas, mounted on canvas
30 x 24 cm | 11 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.

Art Fairs

News

Judit Reigl 100 | Judit Reigl and the Second School of Paris

Octobre 4th 2023 - January 28 2024

Mucsarnok, Budapest

To celebrate the centenary of Judit Reigl’s birth, the Mucsarnok in Budapest is presenting a collection of over 60 works representing the artist’s fine career. The exhibition retraces Reigl’s major periods, including her rare figurative paintings executed during her stay in Rome. It will also be an opportunity to rediscover the impressive canvases in Jean […]

Judit Reigl 100 | Judit Reigl and the Second School of Paris

Action, Gesture, Paint | Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70

9 February - 7 May 2023

Whitechapel Gallery, London

Whitechapel Gallery presents a major exhibition of 150 paintings from an overlooked generation of 81 international women artists. Reaching beyond the predominantly white, male painters whose names are synonymous with the Abstract Expressionist movement, this exhibition celebrates the practices of the numerous international women artists working with gestural abstraction in the aftermath of the Second […]

Action, Gesture, Paint | Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70

Paris et nulle part ailleurs

September 27, 2022 - January 22, 2023

Musée de l'histoire de l'immigration

  24 artistes étrangers à Paris. 1945-1972 The exhibition Paris et nulle part ailleurs (Paris and Nowhere Else) immerses the public in the years of post-war tumult that saw the emergence of new artistic visions, in the fields of abstraction, figuration and kinetic art, between 1945 and 1972. In the first half of the 20th century, Paris […]

Paris et nulle part ailleurs

At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

July 2 - November 22, 2022

Fondation Maeght

The exhibition at the Fondation Maeght will show works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art from the 2nd of July until the 20th of November 2022 and offers an immersion in the vibrant creation of the years 1945 to 1980. Home to a collection of more than 13,000 works, Fondation Maeght is […]

At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

Receive news from the gallery

Sign up