Karel Appel / Martin Barré / James Bishop / Chu Teh-Chun / Jean Degottex / Jean Dewasne / Sam Francis / Simon Hantaï / Hans Hartung / Shirley Jaffe / André Lanskoy / Marcelle Loubchansky / Georges Mathieu / Jean Miotte / Lutka Pink / Serge Poliakoff / Judit Reigl / Jean-Paul Riopelle / Gérard Schneider / Kimber Smith / Nicolas de Staël / Tal Coat / Mark Tobey / Victor Vasarely / Fabienne Verdier / Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
The aim of this exhibition is to highlight the relationship between color and abstraction in the second half of the 20th century. This relationship is marked by a struggle, a battle. Color struggled to gain a foothold in post-war abstract expression within an aesthetic context that was unwelcome to the use of vibrant hues. The dominant color palettes were often dark, rarely straying from black, white, and gray.
Towards "Abstract Color"
Some manage to impose their colorful vision despite everything, like Dewasne, through geometric expression, or through lyrical power, like Mathieu, Schneider, Poliakoff, Hartung, and today Fabienne Verdier, or even through color itself as the central element of the work, as with Hantaï. On the other side of the Atlantic, artists strongly claim the Matisse legacy and make color the essential component of their abstract work while reinventing painting. This is the case with Shirley Jaffe and Sam Francis, or with Kimber Smith and James Bishop.
From these struggles, this resistance, this rebirth, these interconnections, emerges a sensation, a feeling, even a language, vibrant or somber, that can be described as "abstract color."
Curator : Antoine Villeneuve
Artistic director : Éric Morin, scénographe et Françoise Oppermann