This exhibition shows a panorama of French painting over the last five decades, from 1960 to the present. Fifty works from 24 artists illustrate the richness and diversity of representation and challenges audiences to rethink the story of painting. The exhibits illustrate the brightness and diversity of painting both as objects of art and subjects for study.
As it’s known, painting did not fare well during the Twentieth Century. The modern artists analyzed it, questioned it and deconstructed it; in the 1960s the “New Realists” practically destroyed it, making projections on to canvas and burning it. Then, in the 1970s the “Supports-Surfaces” artists reinvented its structure, to separate and to “break” it, in the 1980s it became increasingly anonymous while in the post-conceptual age painting was forced to disappear altogether.
So, what remains of painting now? How does it fit in, how does it lie in the contemporary artistic landscape of France? This exhibition seeks to clarify these issues by offering a series of parallels between different artists, emphasizing their intersection and convergence within the fabric of art history. It offers a series of “combinations” bringing together established and well-known painters and younger generation artists using the same approach or interested in similar subjects. This aesthetic and conceptual match-making shows the continuity between generations and restore the identity and direction of different art movements.
It is therefore, both a retrospective and a new perspective on French painting. It has historical references but represents an urgent new definition of painting given to it by its practitioners. The exhibition allows the audience to enter painting and see its interaction with sculpture, film and even manufacturing and to project its patterns, planes and colours.
Cécile Bart
Guillaume Bresson
Julien Carreyn
Philippe Cognée
Damien Deroubaix
Marc Desgrandchamps
Daniel Dezeuze
Erik Dietman Noël Dolla
Roland Flexner
Bernard Frize
Jean-Olivier Hucleux
Herve Ic
Armand Jalut
Véra Molnar
Jacques Monory François Morellet
Eva Nielsen
Jean-Michel Sanejouand
Benjamin Swaim
Morgane Tschiember
Raphaël Renaud
Sarah Tritz
Victor Vasarely
The exhibition is co-organized by the PERMM Museum and the Galerie Iragui (Moscow-Paris).
It is organized in cooperation with the French Embassy in Moscow, the French Institute in Russia and the Perm Ministry of Cuture, Youth and Mass Communication, as well as with the participation of the Marco Group, LLC and the Perm branch of “Ingosstrakh”.
