Exhibition catalog, Museum Tessée, Le Mans.
209 pages. In French.
How to continue painting when easel painting is declared dead and the trend is towards Pop Art, non-art, conceptual art, and minimalism? This is the question posed by this book published on the occasion of the exhibition "Le Choix de la peinture, une autre histoire de l'abstraction, 1962-1989," presented at the Tessé Museum in Le Mans.
This overview covers three decades of abstract painting in France from the early 1960s to the 1980s.
It brings together artists whose approach was based on a different conception of gesture, the role of color, and the notion of the painting. Their works testify to the profound renewal of pictorial practices in the 1960s, the deconstruction of painting elements initiated around May 1968, and the return of the painting initiated in the early 1980s.
In light of this relatively long-term perspective, this book offers a fresh look at the contribution of three generations of painters who often opposed each other but whose correspondences and influences are now to be reconsidered.