The Académie des beaux-arts and the Gandur Foundation pour l’Art present «  Éloge de l’abstraction » – Painters from the Académie des beaux-arts in the collections of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, at the Pavillon Comtesse de Caen from 12 October to 26 November.

These twenty-five abstract paintings – from the collections of the Gandur Foundation pour l’Art produced between 1945 and 1965, illustrate the singular careers of seven artists who were members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and whose work contributed to the birth of a new abstraction known as Art Informel. These works go against the grain of the dominant geometric abstraction and are particularly revealing of their time. Despite their stylistic differences, they share a new conception of painting that is anything but academic.

The grouping of works by Jean Bertholle, CHU Teh-Chun, Olivier Debré, Hans Hartung, Georges Mathieu, Antoni Tàpies and Zao Wou-Ki, chosen by Bertrand Dumas, curator at the Foundation and curator of this exhibition, embodies one of the most fertile periods in the history of twentieth-century art, when Paris was still the beacon of the international avant-garde.

“In this collective adventure, the artists used the most radical means to revolutionise the painting of their time. Their non-figurative, anti-geometric works invented the signs of a new pictorial language in the meanders of their materials and the power of their gestures”.  Bertrand Dumas, exhibition curator.

Image 1 : Nostalgie, 1957 © ADAGP, Paris 2023

Image 2 : Composition n° 22, 1959 © ADAGP, Paris 2023