2024 exhibition in Niel Museum

The first was born in 1941 in Paris at the Galerie Braun with the exhibition "Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française" ("Twenty young painters in the French tradition"). In the midst of the Occupation, getting together, exhibiting together and exalting the French tradition was an act of resistance and revolt. To illustrate this movement, Jean Bazaine, Jean Bertholle, Maurice Estève, Charles Lapicque, Jean Le Moal Alfred Manessier. These artists, with their wide range of expressions and their quest for transcendence in the dark years, bear witness to the revival of French painting and symbolize the rise to power of non-figuration, which largely dominated this immediate post-war period until the 1960s.
Thirty years later, in the midst of the upheavals that led to May '68, another group emerged, equally concerned with aesthetic renewal, deconstruction and reinvention of painting. They opposed the universe proposed by their elders, breaking away from "easel painting". This was the Supports/Surfaces group, whose short-lived existence nevertheless had a lasting and profound impact on the French and international artistic landscape. On view: André-Pierre Arnal, Louis Cane, Marc Devade Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour and Claude Viallat.
Fifty-seven works are on show, questioning the essence and meaning of two avant-gardes, placing them in their national and international artistic context, and highlighting the persistence of painting between evolution, renewal and rupture.

Classification/labels

• Modern/contemporary art

Spoken languages

• French