From July 2 to November 20, Fondation Maeght is unveiling 100 works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art offering a fascinating immersion into abstraction from the 1950s to the 1980s. Conceived chronologically by Yan Schubert, curator of the fine arts collection at the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, the exhibition path offers insights into four decades of creativity during which artists revisited the very foundations of painting in the wake of the war and envisioned new forms of expression. Divided into nine thematic sections, the exhibition charts the evolution of non-figurative art and its various trends from the 1950s to the late 1980s.
In the wake of Second World War, as many European artists exiled in the United States headed back to France, Paris regained its status as a global cultural capital. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a craving to rethink painting in the post-war years, artists from all over the world returned to their studios and engaged in an era of creative effervescence, be it in the arts, literature or cinema. While the breakthroughs by the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century were an invaluable post-war stimulus, abstract art renewed itself from the most gestural expression to the interrogation of materials, mediums and techniques.
The works displayed at the Fondation Maeght highlight the variety of forms embraced by abstraction during these creative years. The constantly renewed pictorial research led by Hans Hartung, Martin Barré, Simon Hantaï or Pierre Soulages, to name only a few, trace the evolution of non-figurative art over four decades. In a thematic and chronological path, the exhibition invites the viewer to discover lyrical and gestural abstraction by Georges Mathieu, abstract expressionism by Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, geometric abstraction by Victor Vasarely, kinetic works by Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, through to the rethinking of painting by the Supports/Surfaces group. The 1980s ushered in an era of revitalized abstract art, building on the hectic experimentation of earlier years.
Curator : Yan Schubert