François Arnal, Camille Bryen, Jean Degottex, Claude Georges, Karl Otto Götz, Otto Greis, Simon Hantaï, Gerhard Hoehme, Heinz Kreutz, Judit Reigl, Bernard Schultze, Jaroslav Serpan, KRH Sonderborg, Fred Thieler, Claude Viseux et Wilhelm Wessel
In 1957, Wiesbaden made art history: under the title Couleur vivante – Lebendige Farbe, the first landmark exhibition of abstract French and German painting in Germany took place at the town’s municipal museum. This major museum presentation of informal painting brought together 16 artistic positions, eight per country, from France and Germany respectively. The exhibition set a bold and avant-garde precedent in postwar Germany and established Wiesbaden as a significant venue for contemporary art.
To mark the 70th anniversary in 2027, the Museum Reinhard Ernst is planning an exhibition that partially reconstructs the historic show and makes tangible the breadth and life-affirming novelty of abstract painting in the 1950s. At the heart of the mre’s temporary exhibition are the works by Judit Reigl, the only female artist who was part of the group exhibition in 1957.
The Hungarian-French artist Judit Reigl (1923–2020) successfully escaped from Hungary in 1950 – after eight failed attempts and a three-month journey to Paris, part of which she completed on foot. Following a creative phase shaped by Surrealism, she turned to Abstraction in the early 1950s.