A selection of works by Georges Mathieu exhibited this autumn in Paris

Exhibitions, Galleries

People often ask us where to view Georges Mathieu artworks live. The exhibition “L’abstraction de 1920 à nos jours” (Abstraction from 1920 to the present day) staged at Galerie Hélène Bailly (25 quai Voltaire, Paris 7th district) from October 15th to December 19th, 2015, shows ten artworks including the stunning Entéléchie carolingienne V (1956).

Invalid Displayed Gallery

Philippe Bourgoin writes in the exhibition catalogue:

Imposing a new type of sign, opposed to the geometric abstraction of Mondrian, and with reference to the painting of Kandinsky, Mathieu, master of lyrical abstraction, favours the gesture, the movement and the emotion. No painter has pushed further the quest for improvisation, the taste of spontaneity and the violence of the touch. Fighting every day, his works are the expression of a passion which the writing, agile and nervous, the sense of the material, the strength of colour and composition dominate. Each of his creative acts was a ceremonial that sometimes was staged, the precursor of the happening, painting in front of hundreds of spectators. Directly using tubes of colour, without a prior outline, he painted his canvases freely, juxtaposing signs without literal meaning. In 1950, as a kind of provocation, he began to associate with his paintings titles inspired by the history of France, with the sole purpose of naming the works. Entéléchie carolingienne V (“State of perfection”) is part of an ensemble of five paintings of which the first two were exhibited in Paris in May 1956, at the gallery Rive Droite.