Catalogues d'expositions collectives

Action, Gesture, Paint

At a time when the world was processing the anxieties of the Second World War and navigating a backdrop of deeply conflicted political climates, artists began to express their concerns in a new form of art that embraced personal and political freedom. Ironically, the reach of this ‘freedom’ has been limited to the white, male, and Western perspective. The overlooked narrative of gestural abstraction is kaleidoscopic, broad in its geographical breadth, in its definition and, crucially, it is female.

The presence of Vincent van Gogh, the only male artist in the exhibition, is not however fortuitous. It allows us to extend the field of vision not only backwards, through the forces that participate in the process of expressive and gestural painting and then escape from the paintings, but also forwards, in the direction of the radical revival in dance and performance that began in the 1960s.

This exhibition catalogue contains colour reproductions of all the works exhibited as well as new essays.

Pages: 368 p.
Languages: French, English
Graphic design: Kajsa Ståhl
Publisher: Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles / Whitechapel Gallery / Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Specificities: Clothbound and screen-printed hardback
Date: June 2023