Applicat-Prazan

The School of Paris 1945 – 1965

 by Lydia Harambourg

The term ‘Nouvelle Ecole de Paris’ was employed for the first time in 1952 by the critic Charles Estienne for an exhibition he organised at the Galerie de Babylone, in Paris, to avoid confusion between the first Ecole de Paris – constituted from the many artists who had emigrated to Paris early in the twentieth century – and the new generation rooted in postwar abstraction. Charles Estienne included under this term most of the artists who symbolised the 1950s and who had nothing in common with the previous generation.

The story began in 1941 with the exhibition Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française which, under the occupation, opposed the permanence of art, which had not yet been liberated from nature and the figure before turning to non-figurative expression. Among these young artists were Bazaine, the initiator, Bissière and Manessier. They constituted the core of what came to be called ‘La Nouvelle Ecole de Paris’. The term ‘school’ is, however, inappropriate, as no form of teaching was dispensed and the movement was comprised of various currents with a variety of styles derived from the legacies of fauvism, cubism and surrealism (Masson, Lam). Often in conflict with each other, these groups came together and disbanded in response to the aesthetic issues and critical controversies aired in a committed press, where daily newspapers and reviews positioned themselves alongside the dealers and their stables of artists, to promote a new, free form of abstract art, between ‘lyricism and abstraction’ (Restany).

Each of the abstract artists developed their own personal research. Vieira da Silva, Nicolas de Staël, Fautrier, Hélion, Charchoune, Estève, Atlan (who created a link with Cobra – Jorn, Corneille and Appel), Dubuffet, Bram and Geer Van Velde. They were not, however, all lyrical. Denise René defended geometrical abstraction which included Magnelli, Herbin and Vasarely, while the trio Hartung, Schneider and Soulages counter-attacked at Lydia Conti’s gallery. The Nouvelle Ecole de Paris soon occupied a commanding position. Lyrical abstraction was a success. It proclaimed the gesture, the sign and speed. In 1947 Georges Mathieu brought lyrical or psychic non-figuration to the public’s attention with a group exhibition that included Wols, Bryen, Atlan and Riopelle and, the following year, showed for the first time the American Action Painters – Pollock, Tobey and de Kooning.

Lyrical abstraction was at the centre of the combative debates between critics such as Charles Estienne, Léon Degand, Julien Alvard, Michel Tapié, R.V. Gindertaël, Michel Ragon, Jean-Clarence Lambert and Pierre Restany before the latter broke with the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris artists.

Space and time became poetic elements. In the work of Olivier Debré, Zao Wou Ki and Chu Teh Chun, nature was considered from a new perspective which suggested to Ragon the term ‘lyrical landscapism’. Signe paysage, signe personnage, for Debré’s abstraction fervente; the immanence of the gesture for a lightning style with Hartung, Schneider and Mathieu; lyrical abstraction equally encompassed other designations: art informel, art autre (Tapié), tachisme.

Texture, rhythm and the symbolic of the sign summoned forms and colours driven by the pressure of a gestural language. The stain met with varying fortune with Lanskoy, Estève and Manessier. From Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Rive Droite, galleries blossomed forming strongholds where the artistic advances testified to intense activity (Pierre Loeb, René Drouin, Paul Facchetti, Jeanne Bucher, Nina Dausset, Pierre Craven, Galerie de Beaune, Galerie de Babylone, Galerie Kléber, Galerie Arnaud…). A single maxim prevailed: not to show figurative work. The artists cohabited on the walls of these galleries and the new Salons: Réalités Nouvelles, Mai and Octobre.

For nearly two decades, the aesthetic of the gesture, speed and its control, and the sign, united artists from all over the world in passionate confrontation lived with the freedom, taste for risk and jubilation that characterised these years of struggle.