Denise René Gallery

Art is first of all a question of choice. At the end of the Second World War, when five years of German occupation had reduced cultural life to its strictest minimum, everything seemed possible for a young gallery. The first exhibitions organized by Denise René, as early as June 1945, bore witness to the fierce need for liberty and the desire to experiment, even when later channeled into geometric abstraction and then Kinetic Art, that are without doubt her most constant traits of character. From Max Ernst or Picabia to Atlan or Lapicque, during her first five years of activity, the pleasure of showing forgotten masters (and therefore unknown) from before the War, as well as new artists gave a new image to the already renowned Ecole de Paris. One common trait that was essential in the virulent debates shaking the world of all these "abstract" artists (even if today this title may be quite logically questioned by many of them), was that to create a new aesthetic they first of all refused any academism that could be tied to a figurative tradition.

Denise René took as her guiding principle the idea that art must invent new paths in order to exist; this was to be the basic intuition of her analyses. In this still confused grouping, that went under the term ‘abstract art’, where the non-figuration of a Manessier an Estève or a Bazaine was next to the informal research of Fautrier or Dubuffet, in order to keep the image subjacent she emphasized formal abstraction; that which in developing the fundamental ideas of Cubism transforms the painting into a purely plastic act, where emotion is born not from narration but finds its inspiration in the combination of the forms and colours. Having chosen this path, Denise René gathered together historical artists and young creators in a dialogue that the Gallery has always kept alive. In this way, from the early years, she put together Arp and Magnelli, Sophie Taeuber and Herbin, all first generation abstract pioneers, with young artists that she discovered and introduced, like Vasarely, Jacobsen, Dewasne or Mortensen. In the context of her work to highlight the pioneers of abstract art, she was also the first to manage what no French museum had ever done: in 1957, with the help of Dutch museums, she showed Mondrian, who had lived in Paris from 1919 to 1938 but had never had his own "personal exhibition".

This dialogue between the generations, this feeling of continuity in art history, and the idea that the work of a gallery is to discover and make familiar until museums take over, is the basis of the historical exhibition that Denise René and Vasarely held in 1955: Le Mouvement. In seeking historical antecedents, like Marcel Duchamp or Calder, and in recalling the articulations represented by the works of Vasarely or Jacobsen, the exhibition provided a framework and justified the research of young artists like Tinguely, Soto, Agam, Pol Bury who were unknown at the time, although this is difficult to imagine today, and who were laying the foundations of Kinetic Art.

Denise René developed this task of putting the different generation of abstract art into perspective by introducing to Paris the historical figures of the concrete avant-gardes of Eastern Europe. This tradition was unknown in Paris up until then and was highlighted by the retrospective of the Hungarian Lajos Kassak, Stazewski from Poland and the exhibition "Précurseurs de l’Art Abstrait en Pologne" (Precursors of Abstract Art in Poland) in 1957, with Malevitch, Kobro, Strezminski, Berlewi…(just as today she is showing the young Russian artist Jeltov). At a time when international exchanges were far less frequent than today, the gallery wanted to be open to creators from all over the world.

The Denise René Gallery became a natural gathering point for artists from the Latin American continent who preferred plastic research to narration: people like Cicero Dias from Brazil, Sot and Cruz Diez from Venezuela and the Argentinians Le Parc, Tomasello or Demarco are all witnesses to this. This privileged relationship with Latin America began in 1956 when Denise René published "Vénézuela", a Vasarely album that echoed the painter’s experience with the architect Carlos Raul Villanueva. A Vasarely exhibition organised and presented by the Gallery in 1958 in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Sao Paulo furnished the opportunity for new encounters during its inaugurations, and many exhibitions.

Denise René had not only been one of the first French art dealers to understand that a gallery must review international creation and not limit itself only to those artists who came to live in Paris, she also knew, rapidly, that after the War information had a tendency to be world-wide in character and that it was not sufficient to wait until foreigners took advantage of a trip to Paris to discover new artists. The militant Denise René Gallery sought out and found new structures, a new public and made the most contemporary creation available to them. From April 1948 she organised exhibitions in Denmark, finding partners in the big, local galleries (Birch, Tokanten, and Rasmussen) who could continue her action to make constructed art known. In 1951 the organization of the Klar Form exhibition that toured the museums of Scandinavia and Belgium for a year was the concrete result of this visionary conception of the work of a gallery.

From time to time a dealer who accompanies the art of his or her time becomes a part of it; this was the case with Kahnweiler and Cubism, Herbert Walden and German Expressionism, Castelli and Pop Art. In 1955, when Denise René organized the exhibition "Le Mouvement" she instigated a new artistic concept and created a movement at the same time as she revealed a new generation of artists. Kinetic Art, to use the term coined in 1955 by Vasarely, followed by the development of Op Art, became one of the major tendencies in international contemporary art for fifteen years. The rapid public success of Kinetic Art, and its immediate echo in Europe and the United States should perhaps be seen as the natural and indispensable counterpoint to Pop Art. Where the latter restored the image and its power to bear witness to the social world, the Kinetic artists questioned art again, interrogated vibration, virtual colour, and all that in a fixed image calls upon the optic nerve or, on the contrary, introduced with real movement a dimension of duration that modified the approach to visual arts by bringing them nearer to the developments in time offered by the cinema and music. The immediate echo of these ideas, the influx of new artists who joined them, bore witness to the correctness of the intuition of the initiators of the movement, and also swept away the seeds of academisation. Multiples, a generous social idea that consisted of putting art within the reach of the greatest number of people rather than only that of the rich collectors, in diffusing the artists’ works by the hundred, made these consumer goods little different from those that Pop Art boasted about. The Grand Prix for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966 was given to Julio le Parc and showed official recognition of Kinetic Art, as the prize conferred on Rauschenberg two years previously had done for Pop Art, making Optical Art a fashion phenomenon. As is always the case with art, however, public recognition of a movement sounds its death toll. Denise René was not just a witness to the second half of the Twentieth century, but was a leading actor. Without her a part of the art of this century would have taken many more years to be discovered. Certain artists may not even have found the means to continue their creation without her support. In retrospect, one can take an inventory of that which the Gallery did not take into account, ask oneself why Bridget Riley or Takis did not find their place there, be surprised that Minimal Art was not the logical follow-up to the line of thought maintained by Denise René.However, aside from these lacuna, what remains is the admirable fidelity of a dealer with a guideline, the capacity to resist fashion’s sways and the financial or media ebb and flow that goes with them. If everybody agrees today with the severity and the importance of the choices made, what is perhaps most impressive is the moral dimension that Denise René gave to a profession of which few imagine that this is its major quality.

Abstraction in Poland

In neighboring Poland, where we saw waving a current avant-garde, expressionist and "formists" constructivism led to the creation of the group "Blok" (1924-26), inspired by M. Szezuka that evolved from Suprematism Constructivism commitment to communism. The group's magazine Praesens "(which, with its" Unism "resume line malevitchean purified), would, in 1929, the group "RA" ("revolutionary artists"), with H. Stazewski and the sculptor K. Kobro, a new way by profit, while H. Berlewi was engaging in an online "Mecano-making, " the study of optical vibrations. In all this turmoil has resulted, in 1931, creating the first museum of abstract art and avant-garde in Europe, in Lodz, which might last.

Abstraction in U.R.S.S.

These were years of ferment within the framework of the Soviet revolution in plant heritage by baking a politicized before, we observe - as we have seen its impact on architecture. The Department of Plastic Arts of the People's Commissariat for Education, IZO, Lucacharsky excited by the workshops free Svonsas, which replaced the Academy of St Petersburg in 1918 and professed where Malevich, as in the UNOVIS Vitebok, Institutes of Culture Arts, here in Moscow, the Inkhuk where Kandinsky taught in 1920, passing away To the "Bauhaus" since losing its tendency, and Suprematism and Constructivism where doctrines were necessary, the Vikhutein, Technical Institute of Moscow, dominated by Tatlin that there, rather monotonously made many disciples, among them the brothers G. and V. Stenberg and K. Medunetsky - were so many bodies active propaganda of an art, or an "agit-prop" in the theater, with its sets, played an important role, as the poster and the most graphic arts, abstract formulations which would otherwise also took to the streets in festive decorations, or in trains (and boats) that advertising across the vast country. In 1922, an exhibition of Soviet avant-garde in Berlin, was to some extent, the swan song of such action.

In reality, the USSR, beyond its immediate turmoil, the abstraction was not more than an accident, between the naturalist tradition more or less a modernized neoplasticism popular, nationalist, and his recovery as early as 1920, scholars adhering to the new political , which eventually annihilate, soon, the revolutionary vanguard.

Vitatline Vladimir (1885-1953)

In 1919, Vitatline (1885-1953) declared that Suprematism was "the sum of all the mistakes of the past", it expresses its opposition to personal and ideological Malevich. Disciple Larianov, marked by a structured and whose colorful expressionism was not unconnected with the interest in traditional icons. Tatlin had an adventurous youth who took him to Paris in 1913, there admiring the buildings raised by Picasso, based on their own "counter-reliefs" which, with experiences of materials and applications in the corners of rooms, modifying its spatiality, created the constructivist movement in 1927, enriched by a new flying machine invented organic, "Latatlin" - but especially in 1919-20, the project of the monument to the Third International, we already know helical construction of a fleeting expression "Komfuturism. Artistic animator, teacher, victorious defender of the principle of "production art" against the "art lab" (which represented Suprematism) a "productivist" politicized, proclaimed in 1921, with rejection of easel painting, and that led to his craft, poster, the theatrical decor already practiced in youth (and who was prominent field of action of his movement, thanks primarily to the enactments (V. Mayerhold) - none of this prevented the misfortune of Tatlin, compared to the realism in the official 30 years. The his part, Mr Rodechenko (1881-1956), coming more or less of futurism, the author of geometric designs consisting of animated games curves made in step, methodically (1915-16), and a painting "Black on black," presented polemically against Malevich in 1919, he practiced construction surprises, mobile and linear metal with which participated in 1917, with Tatlin and the disciple of G. Yakulov at the famous Coffee Pitoresque decor, lively artistic center of Moscow, in these years fermentation. Reduced, like Tatlin, applied arts and design, "he devoted himself to photomontage and typesetting. In these areas stood out El Lissitzky (1890 - 1941), engineer and architect, for that matter, a disciple of Malevich, who went from Suprematism to constructivism, the "History of two squares" (1922) and their "prouns”, geometric constructions in space, originally painted. In large photomontage, made the decoration of the Soviet pavilion at the International Exhibition of Printing, Cologne, 1930 - and so too, as in 1920-24, the famous “Lenin Tribune”, we have seen, represented the dictator of an imaginary construction of the high iron. In 1926, El Lissitzky wrote the interior architecture of the "abstract case" to the International Exhibition in Dresden, which he considered his major work. Schwittors friend and collaborator and Arp, and V. Doesbourg, related to the "Bauhaus", as we know, it was for you to connect more regularly between the Russian and the current world West over the years 20.

Kazimir Malevitch (1878-1935)

K. Malevich (1878-1935), from Impressionism and Symbolism and Art Nouveau, Cezanne, Matisse and Derain's, national painter of rustic scenes, composed in 1911-12 figures in a geometric cylindrical, cube-futurist ("Grinder” , 1912-13, Yale University, USA), influenced by Léger, to the ends of abstractization of geometric bodies of revolution, painted with careful modeling in 1912-13, the year he adopted a cubist imagery to a syntactic "transnational "(" Zaorum ", as we saw), or" alogic, compositions, not without humor confused with the spirit "given" ("An Englishman in Moscow, 1913-14, Amsterdam," Partial Eclipse with Mona Lisa " 1914, col. part. Leningrad). But in 1915, Malevich said he made the first works "suprematists," based on the elementary forms of square, circle and cross vertical-horizontal rectangles. The famous "square black on white" (Tretyakov Museum, Moscow), shown in 1915, is emblematic of this phase, possibly marked the work of decorating the Futurist opera "Victory Over the Sun" (1913), with music by M. Matinchine, translator of "Du Cubisme" of Gleizer - which would, in 1917, the painter of "realism in space," in large colored bands, interested in psycho-physiological research on the art visible.

The "Suprematism" as a supreme aesthetic state "monumental", "not objective" deduction based on a conceptual level, is rooted in the philosophical thought of the post-Kantian metaphysics P. D. Ouspenki (“Tercium Organum”, 1911) who, referring to a" higher form of existence" and announcing a "language of the future”, regardless of the real world, exercise (perhaps through Matinchine) great influence on the painter, also interested in "the fourth dimension" (Ouspenki, 1908, on "space-time continuum" of mathematics of Minkowski, 1908) - and still fascinated by the symbolist rhetoric inherent in that thought. "All they're ready to lose all hold new findings (Ouspenki, 1913) applies to the diligence of whom Malevich" Black Square "was" a flat-surface alive, now even born "(" From Cubism and Futurism and Suprematism, a new pictorial realism, 1916); test would be resumed in 1920, as we know, in From Cezanne to Suprematism, the first semantic unit building free pair of systems "flat surfaces" in space, unconditional freedom of movement (cf. A. B. Nakov, 1975) - "zero," which since 1915 has defined its pictorial experience, was a full, equal to the infinite and absolute, the "harmony, rhythm and beauty" (Mirror Suprematist, 1923 ), not the end of a speech earlier aesthetic, a kind of nillyism (cf. D. Valle, 1967). It always defended Malevich, a work that has consistently been to the "square white on white" (1918, MAM, New York), after three or four years of multiple compositions that have the volume, as those architectural possible, the "planitis ". Numerous texts by Die Welt Gegentandslose ("The world has no purpose," published by the Bauhaus, 1927), proclaim or defend a polemical aesthetic and philosophical doctrine that the painter was able to teach in Vitebsk, against the wishes of Chagall, and won, the group UNOVIS, which created in 1920-21, and within two years, the Institute of Artistic Culture in Leningrad - but that already attacked in 1919 by the Constructivists was supposed by idealism, contrary to official line aesthetic and hardly tolerated, as in 1927. Since 1930, the year he was arrested by secret police, conducted a Malevich painting figurative landscapes and portraits that are not without bitter irony - and, in 1935, was buried in a coffin suprematist that he had intended, causing painted on a white background a circle and a black square.

Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964)

The Russian avant-garde, extremely varied and controversial, early Cubism fascinated adapted to a cube-Futurism, as seen, produced the first abstract works in 1910-11, with M. Larionov (1881-1964) and N. Gontacharova (1881-1962), the movement of "Lucism” ("Rayonnism" – "rayonisme" in French), presented in 1913 as a synthesis of Cubism, Futurism and Orphism, controversy and paradoxically organized against Western culture - although Apollinaire to defend his Paris show in the following year. The forms are painted "spatial forms obtained by the crossing of reflected rays of various objects"; located "outside of time and space", want a "fourth dimension" that had met the Cubist more speculative. The career of pictorial Larionov, coming a expressionist painting, popular and anecdotal, for ideological nationalism, and past, as seen by profuse decanted and pioneering activities in the founding of the groups "Jack of Diamonds" (1910), "Donkey Tail" (1912) and "The Target" (1913), ended in 1915, leaving Russia to integrate, set designer and costume designer as brilliant in the company of Diaghilev. Gontacharova, he followed his destiny, though, around 1955, he was reminded in Paris, retracing screens "Rayonnist" of recent cosmic inspiration.

But two other abstract movements, and violently opposed, would occupy more significantly the scene Soviet and then Russia since 1915: the "Suprematism" of Malevich (and Leporskaia A., V. Ernrolaeva, L. Khidekel, N. M. Suetine, G. Kluza, IG Ghaschuik, I. Kliuns, I. Puni, M. Menkov and futuristic O. Rezanov), as manifest in that year published, and "constructivism" of Tatlin and Rodchenko (and Yakulov G., J. Annenkov , W. Ermilov, V. Stepanova and earlier Cubist and Suprematist Vdaltsova and L. N. Popova, as Klium Vernine architects and brothers) and, between two situations (besides A. Exter, coming from the cube-futurism ), the movement "proun" Ed Lisitzky since 1919. Also in this range of options (and parties) realistic Manifest of Prevsner and Galv, in 1920 came forward, constructivist side, a proposal that would have more lasting effect on the sculpture.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

The simultaneity of the abstract Delaunay discs in 1912 (and the "timing" of his disciples), the compositions of varied root cubist and futurist Picabia in 1912-13, the practice of "force-lines" of the Futurists and their "states soul" in Boccioni, Balla and Severini, provide many other situations aesthetic that integrate abstraction, as historically necessary conclusion. And if, "in the background, the Cubist movement and was wanted on a referral to abstraction" (L. Degand, 1953), this can be thought of experimentalism, from Van Gogh to Kandinsky. W. Kandinsky (1866-1944), lawyer qualified in its native Russia, was soon attracted by the folk art that made him "get into the paint and in 1896 went to Munich where the new art attracted him in the "Phalanx " who founded (1901-04) and in which he created his own school, a practice remembered pictorial color in landscapes of Moscow and "romantic paintings, something Symbolists (" Lancer in the landscape”, 1906; “Scream", 1907). Was through that landscape, improvising, Kandinsky activated your palette by Fauve and expressionist influence, coming from Jawlensky, his companion in Murnane where he settled in 1908, and which soon abandoned, to found "Der Reiter Blane" with F. Mara, in 1911. It was here that the painting Kandinsky developed into the abstract, through an ever greater uncertainty and a formal tone in color ("Landscape with bell tower”, 1909, MAM, Paris; "Improvisation on auburn”, 1910, MAM, Paris).

Kandinsky's influence was decisive in the evolution of German painting in Munich from his essay Uber geistig in der Kunst ("On the Spiritual in Art", written in 1910) defined a new aesthetic that situation anthroposophy R. Steiner scored. The artwork is a "living being" with an "inner life" from an "inner necessity of the soul expressed through the symbolic meaning of shapes and colors and communicating the arrival of the "Kingdom of the Spirit" on "time of great spirituality". For these statements, the author has prepared a new chance in artistic creation that a first abstract watercolor, composition of blemishes and fine calligraphy (MAM, Paris), proposed in 1910 - not without that, this year, and until 1913 in "Improvisations" and "Compositions", reference figuratively landscaping continued alternately present. In "With the black bow" (1912, MAM, Paris) in his great shock of ways, where "chaotic cosmos is born", Kandinsky made a definitive work that in 1914, "Table with a Red Spot" (MAM, Paris), "Escape" (Guggenheim Museum, New York), and the four panels made for a collector of New York ("Compositions" which have been designated by the names of four seasons, 1914, MAM, New York and the Guggenheim Museum, No. 1) complete, in its vigorous and colorful forms of conflict euphoric. That same year, with the war, Kandinsky left Munich to Moscow, leaving there his former student and colleague G. Munter (donation to the Municipal Museum in Munich), whose art influenced, along with Jawlensky. A new period of its production took place there, rather fruitful given the difficulties of war and occupation officials after they had as a teacher, founder of a foiled Institute of Artistic Culture (1919) and an Artistic Academy of Sciences in 1921, the year left Russia for Germany. Kandinsky's participation in the Soviet artistic policy was, however, enthusiastic, by temperament more isolated, that remained on the sidelines of a vanguard of committed groups and, in a revolutionary and Berlin Dada, its activity was also reduced. The "Bauhaus", appeared to him as a solution and there was an invite to assume there teaching, along with Klee that was already there. Since 1921, but the painter made frames where strict geometric shapes were articulated with others, calligraphy and free spots ("White Background", 1920, Leningrad, "Red Spot II", 1921, Basel, "Chess", 1921, Guggenheim Museum, New York), on what it was intended to mark constructivist view, to some extent acceptable, but of which the art of Kandinsky defended by denial of the mechanistic principle (cf. W. Grohmann, 1958). It was, rather, an investigation into the relationship between figures and background, located beyond the romanticism of the Munich period. And in this way the painter had to follow in subsequent years.

The encoding of a "new aesthetic that could only score when the signs become symbols", now under pure geometric shapes, circles, straight lines crossed and serpentine curves and distinct from each other within a determined color, reflected the renewed commitment of Kandinsky observation of structural forms in their relations or their "laws of supply". A new test, Punk und Linie zu Flach, "published in 1926, now notes on 1914, reflecting on these" preliminary problems, a science of art, "notes a number of pleadings that served the school professed in the "Bauhaus" however transferred to Dessau, it is also an "organic continuity" test of 1912. The pictures painted then continue to put the problem of space through various combinations of formal, more stringent or more flexible, from key figures used, circle, triangle and square, in a game serious or gay, between "The black circle" (1923, col. part., Paris) and 'Quiet Tension" (1924, MAM, Paris), "Some circles" (1926, Guggenheim Museum, New York) and "Yellow, Red, Blue" (1925, MAM, Paris).

In 1923, the Nazis closed the “Bauhaus" Kandinsky and forced into exile in Paris-Neville, where he died. ”Development in brown" (1933, MAM, Paris) was the last painting in Germany, sad in his allusion; Relations, 1934, (col. part. New York), with its fairy-like joy, is already a framework in Paris, a new period in which, amid considerable difficulties, because his art, then isolated, was met with reluctance and the painter has innovated a greater sense of "baroque exuberance " (W. Grohmann, 1958) that "Composition IX" (1936, MAM, Paris) is a noted example in its profusion of dancing figures on diagonal bands of colored light, or "dominant Curve" (1936, Museum Guggenheim , New York), or "Medium accompanied" (1937, col. part., Paris) in scenes that played at the end of his work, are subject to flight and the rise in spiritual symbolism. "The last frames are the echo of a transitory and transparent world" (W. Grohmann, 1958), which resemble primitive pre-Columbian so married to the memory of Russian folklore itself. The last frame done, "Enthusiasm tempered" (MAM, Paris), makes sail in a pink background, strange life forms, the life of an embryo again.

The "end of theory" that Kandinsky explained in his essay of 1926 was actually of his painting, "1. Find life, 2. Make visible your pulse, 3. Establish the laws that govern life." This organic phase showed a romantic source of Abstract Expressionism to near 1920, and phase equilibrium in a constant and wisdom never denied that, at its points of contact with the art of Klee, does not give up as a spiritualist convention does not forget folk art of his country, received the first invitation to the adventure of painting.

History of Western Art (1750-2000)

The Abstraction

Developing in parallel to cubism and futurism, expressionism and Dada, and surrealism as well, receiving inflows of them revolutionary, a new aesthetic situation is defined, between 1910 and 1917, in Western art that dominate long, sooner or later : the abstraction.

Mental attitude and sensitivity whose roots lie in the Neolithic as the Romanesque art of the steppes and in the western Irish twists of the illuminations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance rhythmic concerns, under Pythagorean lesson, she realizes that a spirit of abstraction to figuration spirit offers compensation, but the historical alternation, responding to cultural and indexes at the beginning of the nineteenth century erupted in mutation, in favor of an extreme evolution of contemporary aesthetic discourse - and already we've seen of Impressionism in the divide, but deny themselves fundamentally naturalism figurative earlier.
Reflection on the colors of Goethe (Zur Farbenlehre, 1810) unwelcome at the time, its psychological effect against the physical theories of Newton, the theory of pure visuality K. Fiedler (who died in 1895, with only collected writings in 1914: Shriften uber Kunst) adopted H. Hilderbrand (Problem der Form, 1893), with recovery of the sense "formal" non-free of classic criterion, and the thesis W. Worringer on Abstraktion und Einfühlung, prepared in German cultural circles in Munich especially (but not the French, who ignored such works), an awareness of the problems posed by an artistic creation "tautogoric" (Schlegel) - only to itself, contrary to due diligence "allegorical" of all figurative formulation. Or an awareness of the infinite as opposed to a finite implies that the naturalistic representation. The abstraction would thus be an "antifiguration" (C. P. Brue, 1955) that is sufficient in itself without external boundaries.

The aesthetic and philosophical speculations such must be added, in Germany, too, in the context of theorizing psychologistic call school in Berlin, around 1912, the influence of "Gestaltheorie" (theory of form, structure) with works of M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka and W. Kohler (Gestaltpsychology, published in the United States in 1929) that, opposed to analytical psychology, define the behavior of the set, in correspondence organized and interdependent components, which are just formal expression and formalizing in the field of aesthetics.

If Cézanne, in 1904, reported in the treatment codable geometric models of nature, and M. Denis, already in 1890, remembered that a framework is a priority, "a flat surface covered with colors" on it pointing to the fundamental situation of abstract painting to Worringer, the "abstraction" reflected the desire of separating hostile nature, and not "communion" in an anguished isolation or changed, that intellectual and sensitively, defended himself, as alien to the everyday world, but it also tended to "access to the underlying archetypal forms that random variations introduced the world today (H. Read, 1955 ), imparting a sense of this, through a pedagogical action. The demand thus rendered metaphysics leads, finally, amid a crisis mythology of the Western world, an "ultramitologie" (J.-A. France, 1959) of perfect geometric expression by one of two major ways in which art abstract was stabilized.

The other is located in, exacerbation of feelings - and its root expressionist (or surrealistic) Cubist corresponds to the root (or cube-futurist) of the first.

The names, descriptive or controversy, which received the abstraction, sometimes reflect their own rootedness, now a timing of steps walked or aesthetics than formulated. The "abstract expressionism" or "lyrical abstraction" marking the first situation to the borders of "informality" (M. Tapio, 1951) or "action painting" ("action painting" or "gestural") and "gesturalism "H. Rosenberg, 1952) or "tachisme" (from tache, "spot, C. Estienne, 1954). But theoretical situations or particularistic movements of geometric abstraction rooted in Cubist, are the names of Russian constructivism "and" Suprematism, "or the Dutch" neoplasticism "and" elementarism "- but they joined a new concept of Concrete "(TV Doesbourg, 1951), which sought to oppose the abstraction, considering it" over the period of research and experience speculative.” For G. Mathieu (1951), these situations (also known as "cold abstraction" as opposed to the expressionistic embellishments) fit into the generic term "aformalism. Later, around 1960, an art-based optical effects will take the name of American "op'art" while investigations led to the mechanical "kinetic art", and another in a geometric framework or formalistic.

The classification of "non-figurative" rather vague, sought to oppose the type geometric abstraction, ignoring the "figures" of this geometry and only thinking about the nature of what we thought were not well founded their own experiences. In the immediate postwar period, however, a new school of Paris "has adopted this name, rooting on her accepting an impressionist, retained by the emotion of the original natural subject. "No goal", for its part, label was proposed by H. Rebay, the United States in 40 years, a recovery that had not fortune.

In the two trunks herd of abstraction we thus define themselves both situations, a sentimental expression and expression of mental or other geometric, with that priority, immediately taken up in 1910 and 1920 by Kandinsky, after long experience figurative expressionist, while the second is exemplified in Malevich and Mondrian in 1913-14, in 1917 - both coming from Cubism to Suprematism or the neoplasticism, respectively.

The larger or more charismatic historical importance of Mondrian is the exemplary logic of his diligence as much of their persistence, one possible action that cannot benefit Malevich in the Stalin Soviet Union s. The forwarding logic of both objected to the accident that lies at the base of the abstraction of Kandinsky, unable to read figuratively a "Meda" Monet in 1895, and, surprised by a suddenly seen his own composition instead, leaning against a wall of his studio in 1908.

But beyond the current two or more channels of abstraction, it should be noted, with a focus on time (although other relations of reading should be made in various artists), the interpretation of a musical inspiration in visual terms of a universe of sounds, rhythmic affinity. In 1942 the Czech F. Kupka (1871-1957) exhibited in Paris (where he installed in 1895) a screen titled "Disks of Newton" with, by caption, "Amorphous, escape in two colors" (Prague), probably 1910. Then the painter traveled a long way to Fauvism and symbolism to expressionism, influenced by bright, dynamic, having illustrator acerbic humor ("L'Assiette au Beurre") and also attended the group's "Golden Section". The series of their "vertical planes" in 1912-13 (MAM, Paris, etc...), also represents a planned museum already detectable in "piano keys – the "lake of 1909 (Prague) with its vertical listing “planes of color." In the '30s, Kupka inspire would jazz ("Jazz-hot No. 1, 1935, MAM, Paris), a work illegally in many curiosities that changed the cosmic sciences such as music and led the test Creations dans les arts plastiques (1923), in a situation of isolated pioneer. In a similar musical inspiration can subscribe to the Lithuanian painter and composer M. K. Ciurhouris, who died in 1911, working in S. Petersburg since 1906, abstract compositions that mark since 1904, with arabesques of geometric shapes in the "Sonatas of stars, allegro and andante" (1908, Kaunas, Lithuania) took a diluted symbolic figuration, mentioned above. The Russian S. Charchouse, in turn, come and experience "given", he also drew on Bach or Beethoven, to compositions of fine monocronism, a painting so that the symbolism lurks.

Abstract Art Collection Millennium bcp

In 2003 she launched the Millennium bcp brand, the result of successive mergers of several financial institutions in one group, linking history and heritage in a unique collection. Became part of him that came via the Portuguese Commercial Bank, line matrix and renewed based institution, New Network, Atlantic, and through him, Bank Commercial de Macau Bank Mello and Bank Pinto & Sotto Mayor. But the unique collection of artistic goods have passed over the years, also to make part of many goods that were incorporated as a result of mortgages, donations or purchases.

It is also the perception of multidimensional long narrative that is told through works of art, embodied in the choices of the works gathered here today and not by chance, under the theme of Abstraction, released through the core issue of works by Vieira da Silva and his contemporaries but that allowed a strengthening of visibility and dialogic reading with other nuclei present in the collection copyright Millennium bcp. Although it is notoriously absent in the collection of artists such as Fernando Lanhas for a more detailed review of the concept, it can create many situations of encounter between an approach borrowing from the experience of geometry, in which the rigor of the strokes to be confused with the symbolism of the vocabulary and appearance of the most convulsive gesture. Accordingly, and based on the suggestion to build in the works of Vieira da Silva, its landscapes meticulously organized or emotionally dysfunctional in raptures trace energetic and creative, was divided into two and the choice of exhibition space. Having such a prominent figure of geometric abstraction Nadir Afonso, brought to the route experiences grounded in the use of geometric symbols, the texture of its rhythms, chromatic and formal work that organizes. These proposals will reshape years later, in works such as Fernando Aguiar, making these elements of a vocabulary building visual poetry, or of Pedro Casqueiro in structure jarring screens.

The construction of meshes compositional element as the founder of painting or drawing is a recurring element that we find a suggestion in urban TOM graphics, support unstable equilibrium in the austere Angelo de Sousa, optical generator rhythms Eduardo Nery or inquiring of building space image with Artur Rosa. Among them were two key moments in this core work. One that brings together three paintings by Fernando Lemos, an artist whose pictorial intervention and its exposure was diluted in the face of photography and applauded their approval. Works are not seen for so long and which have had an accurate restoration work by specialized techniques and students of the Faculty of Science and Technology, New University of Lisbon in a fruitful partnership between the university and the Millennium bcp. The other, also operated upon for this exhibition brings together the work of Jorge Pinheiro, an artist of uncommon erudition in the seventies that embodies screens as large, chromatically uniform across the length over which scores are suspended fragile, as if a mapping or coded language of songs and silences it were. In connection with these works, we can still find works of Antonio Palolo, Eduardo Batarda and Manuel Cargaleiro.

But if the abstraction is generated in relation to the real, the desire to rescue the action on immobility, crossing the recognizable, the mimetic, the paradigm of figuration and to the environment that operates with an engine-building image, she has the greatest expression of the idea go. That is what is on the screens of Vieira da Silva or Nadir Afonso. But also on chromatic explosions Manuel D'Assunpção, dramatized in the visions of Nikias Skapinakis. A whirlwind of intensity gesture which acknowledges the work of Arpad Szenes, the delicate constructions of Andrew Lanskoy, paintings by Paula Rego accumulation in lacerations of Mário Cesariny envisioned in asparagus Antonio Areal.

There is, in many of these works, a landscape slowly disorganized or suggestion instead, recomposed away from what is recognizable. A sort of meeting between the visible and the inward journey with maximum expression in the exploration of matter of the painting. Zao Wou-Ki when they do happen the day of registration in a pictorial diary of sorts, in compositions of major and vibrant color palette, which is observed has the ability to focus on themselves a long history (personal and political, pictorial, graphic) in brief boost. The same applies to Manessier, even with the structural character of the spot stroke made it presents a mix weight that Zao Wou don’t have. It is one of the most important works of this core, built in the image of retable panel at the height of a moment of spiritual ecstasy. Another is the composition of Serge Poliakoff, great work, as in the formal ingenuity of its composition, the way the material and color are worked. It was one of the paintings restored for this show, the pair of Augusto Barros and Luís Demée.

At the tension between figuration and abstraction, making this productive meeting ground of creation, are the paintings of Louis Dourdil. But the figures also abstracts Júlio Resende Júlio Pomar or, here put into dialogue with the dark visions of Justino Alves and landscapes of blazing Menez and Teresa Magalhães.

Rather than create watertight compartments in reading the works were concerned with making the space as organic as possible, open to the discoveries of the viewer, suggesting more than a tight timeline, and unpredictable encounters mutual meanings.
Les chemins (paths) from Vieira da Silva, entry, set the tone...

Woman

Manuel Pereira da Silva
Woman, 2001
Plaster on aluminum structure
78cmx185cmx50cm