Miró and the United States @ Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona + The Phillips Collection, Washington DC - A Major Exhibition

Miró and the United States

Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

10 October 2025 – 22 February 2026

The Phillips Collection, Washington 

21 March – 5 July 2026

The Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, in collaboration with The Phillips Collection in Washington, presents a new and revealing exhibition entitled Miró and the United States, which highlights the intense, bidirectional and intergenerational relationship between Joan Miró and his contemporaries in North America. While it is well known that many North American artists were inspired by Miró, it is less well known that he was also inspired by North American art, particularly gestural, action and large format painting. This exchange and creative flow spanned continents and generations and is one of the central themes of the exhibition, which is part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Fundació Joan Miró. Coming from a Spain devastated by the Franco dictatorship, the United States represented for Joan Miró not only art, but also a country of large open horizons, hope, democracy, future and endless possibilities.

Miró and the United States brings together an outstanding selection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, films and archival documents from American and European collections, as well as new studies by renowned specialists on Miró’s artistic evolution.

Miró and the United States is a unique exhibition because it offers a fresh look at Miró’s place in modern art, a reading that places the North American context at its heart. In other words, rather than focusing on the French context, which is essential for understanding his work from the 1920s and 1930s onwards, the show situates the United States as a pivotal territory in the evolution of Joan Miró’s artistic language, his international recognition and his connections with other artists. The United States enabled Joan Miró to undertake large-scale public projects – such as the sculpture Moon, Sun and One Star, made for Chicago – that would have been unfeasible in Spain at the time. The open and experimental environment of the United States helped Miró to consolidate his creative freedom and international recognition.

The exhibition therefore showcases key moments in Miró’s career in the USA: his two retrospectives in New York (in 1941 and 1959), his seven visits between 1947 and 1968, and also the pivotal role played by his dealer, Pierre Matisse, as well as the support of various American institutions and collectors.

The exhibition is a unique event as it displays 138 works from American and European collections as well as those from the Fundació Joan Miró’s own holdings, including both works by Joan Miró and approximately forty other artists. The selection is based on known connections and intergenerational relationships of admiration, including the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, Alice Trumbull Mason, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, among many others. This artistic conversation demonstrates how Miró’s legacy continues to live on.

Based on years of research, the exhibition re-examines the established narratives about Miró’s position in the history of art through the selection of artists who feature in it. The different sections of Miró and the United States explore this relationship between Joan Miró and forty-nine contemporary artists from different generations. The exhibition also includes many artists who, despite not being originally from the country, moved or went there temporarily to develop part of their artistic careers. Driven by immigration, exile, the search for opportunities or cultural exchange, these creators played a decisive role in shaping the diverse and international North American art scene.

Although it has become commonplace, the fact that the centre of the art world shifted from Paris to New York is historically grounded. The global upheaval of the Second World War led to many European artists and intellectuals being exiled to the United States, fostering the emergence of North American Abstract Expressionism. This geopolitical and cultural shift was examined in a pioneering manner by Serge Guilbaut in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (1985), in which he argues how New York appropriated the symbolic leadership of modern art.

Joan Miró witnessed and participated in the shift of artistic capital from Paris to New York in the period immediately following the turbulent years of the Second World War. This geopolitical and cultural reconfiguration, which may have once seemed distant, now resonates with an urgency and topicality that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. One of the major attractions of Miró and the United States is the curatorial proposal, which brings together works and artists that reveal connections between Miró and the North American art scene that have never been seen before. The exhibition also offers the public an exceptional opportunity to view works that have never previously been exhibited in Spain, including Lee Krasner’s The Seasons, which is on loan from the Whitney Museum for the first time.

Another exhibition highlight is the presence of Miró's Mural Painting, 20 March 1961 (1961), a monumental work that was exhibited several times in the 1960s: in 1961 at the Galerie Maeght in Paris and the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and in 1964 in London and Zurich as part of the Miró retrospective organised by Roland Penrose. Since then, once Josep Lluís Sert had donated the mural to the Harvard Art Museums, this is the first time they have authorised its loan for an exhibition in Europe, a fact that makes its presence in the Miró and the United States exhibition a truly exceptional event.

Moreover, in an unprecedented move, the first two works that Joan Miró exhibited in the United States are reunited for the first time: Le Renversement (1924) and Painting (1926), which were originally presented at the Brooklyn Museum.

As part of Miró and the United States, the Fundació Joan Miró is presenting 22 pochoirs on paper of Constellations, dated 1959. Like the original Constellations of 1940-1941, they were conceived by Joan Miró so that they could be viewed from both sides. While these pieces have been previously exhibited in other settings, this is the first time they have been displayed according to this original, double-sided design, exactly as the artist had intended. This unprecedented curatorial commitment recovers his original vision, offering the public a fresh look at the formal freedom and experimental spirit that define his work.

Alongside important works admired by Joan Miró, such as Jackson Pollock's Number 14, are more surprising dialogues, such as that with Janet Sobel, whose Illusion of Solidity (1945) shows her to be the precursor of the dripping technique One of the exhibition’s crowning works is Lee Krasner’s The Seasons, a piece of imposing dimensions and sublime visual and emotional impact that is travelling to Spain for the first time. The exhibition also sheds light on female artists who had to use male pseudonyms to gain recognition, such as Henrietta Myers (Peter Miller) and Corinne Michelle West (Michael West).

The Miró and the United States exhibition arrives at a particularly opportune moment, filling a clear need in Miró’s artistic story. It transports us to another time and place – full of light, curiosity and risk – when art was a bold commitment to a better future. Amidst a 20th century marked by repression and instability, contact with the United States represented a source of creative energy and openness for Joan Miró, a democratic and dynamic horizon full of artistic opportunities. Miró actively engaged in dialogue with the North American artistic community, which became a place of inspiration and transformation. This fruitful exchange not only renewed his career, but also reinforced his ability to connect with a world in motion, full of contrasts and possibilities. The exhibition therefore invites us to look back and move forward with hope, to continue taking risks and to believe in the power of art as a tool for change and expanding horizons.

Miró and the United States

© Courtesy Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Miró and the United States, available in Catalan, Spanish and English. It includes texts by renowned Miró curators and specialists: Dawn Ades, Beatriz Cordero Martín, Marko Daniel, Matthew Gale, Patricia Juncosa, Robert Lubar Messeri, Teresa Montaner, Dolors Rodríguez Roig, Élisa Sclaunick, Elsa Smithgall and Anne Umland.

The Miró and the United States exhibition, co-organised with The Phillips Collection in Washington, will also be on show there from 21 March to 5 July 2026.

Curatorship: Marko Daniel, Matthew Gale and Dolors Rodríguez Roig from the Fundació Joan Miró, in collaboration with Elsa Smithgall from The Phillips Collection

FUNDACIO JOAN MIRO, BARCELONA

www.fmirobcn.org

Martin Puryear: Nexus @ Museum of Fine Arts Boston + Cleveland Museum of Art + High Museum of Art

Martin Puryear: Nexus

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

September 27, 2025 – February 8, 2026

Cleveland Museum of Art

April 12 – August 9, 2026

High Museum of Art

September 25, 2026 – January 17, 2027

For more than half a century, the preeminent sculptor Martin Puryear (born 1941) has captivated the public with works of astonishing beauty and elaborate craftsmanship, whose sources of inspiration range from global cultures and social history to the natural world. Co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), Martin Puryear: Nexus is the first substantial survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Assembling some 50 works from across Puryear’s career, the exhibition focuses on his use of a rich variety of materials and media—from sculptures in wood, leather, glass, marble, and metal to rarely shown drawings and prints.

After debuting at the MFA, where it is on view in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, the exhibition travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art from April 12 through August 9, 2026, followed by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from September 25, 2026 through January 17, 2027. Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by a catalogue produced by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Martin Puryear: Nexus reflects the artist’s singular practice, one that combines the distinctive techniques of production with the formal histories he has encountered through a lifetime of movement, research, and study. The exhibition begins with works on paper from the early 1960s and follows Puryear’s subsequent innovations in form, material, and process. Rooted in new scholarship, Martin Puryear: Nexus illuminates the ways in which the artist’s unique vocabulary has been shaped by his enduring interests in global traditions of material culture, African American history, and the natural world.

“With this exhibition we are pleased to feature an exceptional artist of our time and powerful works that speak to Martin Puryear's creativity and exceptional craftsmanship, and the lifelong learning that has fueled his practice,” said Pierre Terjanian, the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Director. “The sculptures included in this survey extend a compelling invitation to engage with themes of culture, identity, and history. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Cleveland Museum of Art for their partnership in making this project possible.”

“Martin Puryear’s art is staggeringly beautiful and also moving in the way that it invites us to see with fresh eyes the world we inhabit,” said William M. Griswold, Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director, the Cleveland Museum of Art. “Given the remarkable range of aesthetic traditions, cultural histories, and techniques of making that Puryear integrates in his work, we are especially pleased to present his career retrospective at museums with comprehensive collections from around the world, and spanning thousands of years of history.”

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Highlights

Martin Puryear, Self (1978, The Joslyn Art Museum)

One of Puryear’s most iconic sculptures, Self shows the importance of dynamic formal oppositions in the artist’s work. At once a dark monolithic mass, Self is light and hollow, enclosing a hidden interior volume. It was assembled piece by piece through cold molding, a technique that Puryear learned through boat-building and which he has integrated into some of his most celebrated sculptures.

Martin Puryear, Night and Day (1984, Nasher Sculpture Center)

A rarely exhibited work, Night and Day reflects Puryear’s enduring interest in natural manifestations of black and white, which divide the two halves of the work’s semicircular arch. One end of the arch sits on the floor, while the other hovers just above it.

Martin Puryear, On the Tundra (1986, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Puryear’s interest in the natural world and ornithology are reflected in his creation of this cast iron sculpture, an abstracted form suggesting a falcon perched on a rock. It was partially inspired by a work from the MFA’s collection: a 1619 portrait of a gyrfalcon by the Mughal court painter Mansur (active around 1590­–1630). Mansur’s painting—a reproduction of which hangs in Puryear’s studio—was immediately compelling for him not only within the history of ornithological portraiture but also as a representation of geopolitical trade routes, as the gyrfalcon is not native to India and likely arrived via diplomatic trade channels from Europe. The exhibition also includes On the Tundra (Winter) (2022, collection of the artist), a recent iteration of the original sculpture in white marble.

Martin Puryear, Confessional (1996–2000, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Composed partly of wire mesh covered with tar, this work evokes a hollow inner space that is visible and obscured at the same time. Its title suggests one possible reading, delineating the wooden platform as a place upon which a confessor—implicitly, the viewer—may kneel and “confess.” Confessional is included only in Boston’s presentation.

Martin Puryear, Big Phrygian (2010–14, Glenstone Museum)

This colossal sculpture is the most dramatic representation of Puryear’s sustained engagement with the lineage of the Phrygian cap. This headdress signified formerly enslaved people in ancient Rome and later became a symbol of resistance to persecution during the French and American Revolutions. In the exhibition it is shown alongside the etching Phrygian (Cap in the Air) (2012, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Martin Puryear, Hibernian Testosterone (2018, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery)

This large, wall-mounted sculpture reproduces in full scale the 12-foot antlers of the Irish elk, an extinct species of deer common during the Ice Age. Scientists of the 1700s had a theory that its antlers—which likely evolved to help the species survive combat and demonstrate sexual prowess and whose growth was propelled by testosterone—contributed to its extinction as they eventually became too heavy for the animal to hold up. Martin Puryear distills this parable-like history from the animal kingdom into a straightforward visual statement, suspending the antlers from an inverted cross.

Martin Puryear, Aso Oke (2019, Jack Shear Collection)

Encountered by visitors before they enter the exhibition, this monumental sculpture, cast in bronze, borrows its form from the fila gobi, a ceremonial cap worn by the Yoruba people of Nigeria. The intricate open latticework is a recurring technique used by Martin Puryear throughout his career.

Martin Puryear, A Column for Sally Hemings (2021, collection of the artist)

One of Puryear’s few indoor site-specific sculptures, this was created for the US Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Responding to the pavilion’s architecture, which was modeled on Monticello—the primary residence and plantation of Thomas Jefferson—the work’s fluted base echoes the Doric columns between which visitors passed to enter the exhibition space in Venice. The sculpture’s title refers to Sally Hemings (1773­–1835), the enslaved Black woman, with whom Jefferson had at least six children.

Martin Puryear: Nexus also features a film that documents Puryear’s most recent outdoor work Lookout (2023), a permanent site-specific commission for the Storm King Art Center. In Cleveland and Atlanta, additional film footage as well as prints, drawings, and documentation of other public commissions will also be on view, demonstrating how Puryear extends his studio practice into the public realm and maintains his commitment to craft and concept on a monumental scale.

Artist Martin Puryear

Over the past five decades, Martin Puryear has created a body of work based on abstract organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references. His labor-intensive sculptures are made by hand at his studio in upstate New York. They combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as more recent technology. As a student, Puryear studied ornithology, falconry, and archery, and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in west Africa, where he was exposed to the region’s Indigenous crafts. Since then he has continued to travel extensively, observing a range of cultures and their unique approaches to object making. “I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,” he has said. “It gives me pleasure to feel there’s a level that doesn’t require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place.”

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941. His first one-person exhibition took place in 1968, and since then he has exhibited throughout the world, including public commissions in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. His work was featured in Documenta 9, and in 1989 he represented the U.S. at the Bienal de São Paulo, where he was awarded the festival’s Grand Prize. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a survey of his work, which traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In 2015, the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibition of 50 years of his works on paper, which traveled to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Martin Puryear received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1989 and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2011. In 2019 he represented the U.S. at the 58th Venice Biennale. His recent commissions include outdoor works at Madison Square Park, the Storm King Art Center, and the Deichman Library in Oslo.

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Catalogue

Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue. Designed and published by the Cleveland Museum of Art, with distribution by Yale University Press, the publication is anchored by five essays authored by a new generation of scholars: Rizvana Bradley, Joan Kee, Emily Liebert, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi.

Martin Puryear: Nexus

Exhibition Catalogue Cover

Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art

Image courtesy Yale University Press

Artwork © Martin Puryear

240 Pages, 10.50 × 13.00 in, 212 color + b-w illus.

Published October 2025

Additional perspectives enter the book through series of responses to individual works, contributed by thinkers and makers from a range of disciplines, many of whom are long-time interlocutors of the artist. They include Nairy Baghramian, Alex Da Corte, Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Phillips, Charles Ray, and Billie Tsien. Alongside these contemporary perspectives, the catalogue features archival materials that have never before been published.

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Curators

The exhibition is co-curated by Emily Liebert, Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art, Chair of Art of the Americas, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Reto Thüring, Head of Culture at the Foundation for Art, Culture, and History in Winterthur, Switzerland and former Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary LArt at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Gabriella Shypula, Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow, The Cleveland Museum of Art. The MFA’s presentation is organized by Ian Alteveer, Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary Art with Daisy Alejandre, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art. The High’s presentation is organized by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art.

MFA - MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON

465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.mfa.org

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection @ LACMA, Los Angeles + Catalogue

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection

LACMA, Los Angeles

Through October 19, 2025

Gu Gan 

Spring Rain, 2000 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

promised gift of the Fondation INK 

© Gu Gan Estate, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva,

courtesy of the Fondation INK

Joey Leung Ka-yin

Daisy Asks, 2012 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

promised gift of the Fondation INK 

© Joey Leung Ka-yin, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva, 

courtesy of the Fondation INK

Fung Ming Chip 

Buddhist Heort Sutra, ref 14, 2006 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, promised gill of the Fondation INK 

© Fung Ming Chip, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva, 

courtesy of the Fondation INK

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection. The exhibition examines experimental works by 34 modern and contemporary calligraphic artists including Fung Ming Chip, Gu Gan, Inoue Yūichi, Lee In, Henri Michaux, Nguyễn Quang Thắng, Qiu Zhijie, Tong Yang-Tze, Wang Dongling, Wei Ligang, and Xu Bing, among others. This is the second in a series of exhibitions of works from LACMA’s Fondation INK Collection, a 400-piece collection of contemporary art in the spirit of ink.

Regional groups of avant-garde modem and contemporary calligraphers have developed across East Asia from the mid-20th century to the present, many of whose works engage with or respond to Chinese characters. Spanning ink on paper, Works on canvas, wood board pieces, and ceramics, the exhibition illuminates how their practices have influenced and informed one another, as well as connections between East Asian calligraphy and Western abstract art. Line, Form, Qi is curated by Susanna Ferrell, Wynn Resorts Associate Curator of Chinese Art, and Wan Kong, The Mozhai Foundation Assistant Curator of Chinese Art, at LACMA.

"While East Asian calligraphy is anchored in tradition, it remains an extremely lively and experimental practice," said Susanna Ferrell. "I am thrilled to introduce to our visitors— many, for the first time—work by artists and art groups with limited exposure in the U.S., such as the Vietnamese Zenei Group of Five."

"As an art historian trained mostly in traditional Chinese art, I find it incredibly exciting to see how artists continue to reveal infinite possibilities for integrating deeply rooted traditions with contemporary concepts and materials," added Wan Kong.

"Line, Form, Qi makes critical connections between artistic practices from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, as weil as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and France," said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan. "With the unparalleled support of Fondation INK Collection founders, Gérard and Dora Cognié, LACMA is advancing its mission to reflect Los Angeles's diverse, interlocking cultures across our collection, exhibitions, and scholarship."

Une, Form, Qi presents more than 60 works across four thematic sections:

The evolution of Chinese characters from oracle bane inscriptions to standard script has been a process of abstraction: from painting pictorial images to writing standardized symbols. The exhibition's first section, Pictograph, spotlights experimentation with the interplay of writing and painting. Here, artists explore and deconstruct the origin of Chinese script. This includes Gu Gan's merging of Chinese tradition and Western abstraction in Spring Rain (2000), which simultaneously recalls and defies historical references. In Landscript (2022), Xu Bing situates written characters within his landscape to retether contemporary characters to the natural elements that once inspired their design.

Message probes relationships between content and form in Chinese writing. The artists featured in this section are conscious of bath the linguistic and visual expression of characters, and incorporate these dual aspects into their works. One of the earliest works included in the exhibition, A (1961), shows lnoue Yiiichi's return to single, inked characters on paper after years of breaking boundaries between abstract painting and calligraphy. Moving through ti me, Joey Leung Ka-yin's Daisy Asks (2012) contemporizes the gongbi (fineline) painting technique by instilling it with imagined narratives grounded in the daily life and culture of Hong Kong. Leung's Cantonese text merges satiricallanguage with classical poetic structure, reading like a single-panel comic strip with an inscription that mimies Fangsong, an imitation Song-dynasty typeface.

Calligraphers in East Asia have traditionally learned by referencing and copying specifie scripts established by their predecessors. Re-Form, however, explores how artists have come to create new forms of characters through persona!, cultural, and existential experiences. In Buddhist Heart Sutra, ref 16 (2006), Fung Ming Chip's calligraphy appears to be relatively standard, but on closer inspection, the center of each character is punctuated by slightly more saturated ink. Buddhist Heart Sutra, ref 14 (2006) juxtaposes the composition with white triangles surrounded by faint impressions of the same text.

ln the final section, Abstraction, artists distill components of calligraphie art, such as a single black ink brushstroke or the shape of a black of text. Departing from tradition, these calligraphy-inspired works must be experienced rather than read. Irene Chou cultivated a language of li nes in her abstract paintings, inspired by script found carved into a series of Sth-century boulders in north-central China. Her featured work, The Universe is My Mind, combines elements of her one-stroke painting technique with the shape of a circle-an evolution of a sphere motif that had previously emerged in her work as a symbol for love and her inner mind.

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art 

from the Fondation INK Collection

Published 2025 | ISBN: 9781636811581

Image courtesy of DelMonico Books

Publication: The exhibition's accompanying catalogue explores significant trends and innovations in contemporary calligraphic art, including abstraction of the character, performance and phenomenological practice, and experimentation with alternative or nontraditional materials and calligraphy methods such as incense burn drawing and lithography. This publication also addresses different through lines from premodern calligraphy to contemporary practice, reflecting the evolution of the Chinese language from pictograph to ideograph and beyond. Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphie Art from the Fondation INK Collection is edited with text by Susanna Ferrell and Wan Kong. Foreword by Michael Govan. Text by Rika Hiro, Stephen Little, Virginia Moon, and Li Wei Ng. Co-published by LACMA and Del Monica Books/D.A.P.

Line, Form, Qi was organized by the Los Angeles Counly Museum of Art and curated by Susanna Ferrell, Wynn Resorts Associate Curator of Chinese Art, and Wan Kong, The Mozhai Foundation Assistant Curator of Chinese Art, at LACMA.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036

www.lacma.org

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection

LACMA, Los Angeles

April 6 - October 19, 2025

Exposition Générale @ Fondation Cartier, Paris - Exposition inaugurale du nouveau bâtiment Place du Palais-Royal de la Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Exposition Générale

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

25 octobre 2025 - fin août 2026

Le nouveau bâtiment de la Fondation Cartier, 

situé 2, place du Palais-Royal à Paris, 

dont l’architecture intérieure est signée par Jean Nouvel

Photo © Luc Boegly

Le 25 octobre 2025, la Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain inaugure ses nouveaux espaces dans le centre historique de Paris, au 2, place du Palais-Royal. Entièrement ouvert sur la ville grâce à ses grandes baies vitrées, le projet architectural conçu par Jean Nouvel s’inscrit dans l’édifice haussmannien des anciens Grands Magasins du Louvre. Composée de cinq plateformes mobiles, son architecture dynamique ouvre la voie à un renouvellement profond des possibilités d’exposition. Dans ce lieu de rencontre saisissant entre le passé et l’avenir, l’architecture de la nouvelle Fondation Cartier est à la fois une extension du paysage urbain et un prolongement de son histoire.

Présentée jusqu’à fin août 2026, l’Exposition Générale dévoile l’identité artistique de la Fondation Cartier et son patrimoine à travers près de 600 oeuvres de plus de 100 artistes qui ont jalonné sa programmation de 1984 à aujourd’hui. Reflet de l’histoire de l’institution et de son ouverture au monde dans toute sa diversité, la Collection de la Fondation Cartier témoigne de quatre décennies de création contemporaine internationale. L’exposition met ainsi en lumière la singularité d’une collection unique, qui s’est construite, tout au long de son histoire, à travers sa programmation. Elle est composée d’expositions personnelles et d’ensembles thématiques autour desquels s’articulent les engagements artistiques de la Fondation Cartier : architectures, mondes vivants, technologies et sciences se déploient à travers des oeuvres emblématiques et des fragments d’expositions marquantes qui ont façonné l’histoire de l’institution.

L’Exposition Générale emprunte son titre aux expositions d’objets et de vêtements qui se tenaient aux Grands Magasins du Louvre. Contemporaines des Expositions universelles, dont la première édition parisienne de 1855 fut concomitante de la construction du bâtiment lors de la première phase des travaux du baron Haussmann, ces « Expositions Générales » étaient de véritables lieux de sociabilité et de découvertes, offrant une nouvelle compréhension de la culture matérielle. Le bâtiment incarne un symbole de l’avènement de la modernité dans Paris que la Fondation Cartier fait dialoguer avec sa Collection. En la présentant dans l’esprit d’ouverture qui caractérisait ces « Expositions Générales », l’institution conçoit l’exposition comme un lieu public d’expérimentation et de partage au coeur de la ville.

Week-end d’ouverture gratuit les 25 et 26 octobre 2025 

A l’occasion de l’inauguration de son nouveau site au coeur de Paris, la Fondation Cartier invite le public à découvrir gratuitement ses espaces et l’Exposition Générale. 

Réservation obligatoire et dans la limite des places disponibles

A paraître aux Éditions de la Fondation Cartier

Catalogue Exposition Générale 

© Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Image courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

En précommande le 1er octobre

La Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain par Jean Nouvel

© Jean Nouvel © Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Image courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

En précommande le 1er octobre

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain POP UP

© Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Image courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Parution 22 octobre

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Yann Kebbi

© Yann Kebbi © Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Image courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Parution 22 octobre

FONDATION CARTIER POUR L'ART CONTEMPORAIN

2, place du Palais-Royal, Paris

www.fondationcartier.com

Maj 23.09.2025

Mary Heilmann @ Hauser & Wirth Zurich - Works on Paper

Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper 

Hauser & Wirth Zurich

26 September – 20 December 2025

Mary Heilmann

Tea Garden, 1984

Watercolor on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm / 30 x 22 in

Photo: Thomas Müller

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1986-1988

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 12.7 x 17.5 cm / 5 x 6 7/8 in

Photo: Thomas Müller

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann returns to Hauser & Wirth’s Zurich gallery on Limmatstrasse with an exhibition of more than 30 drawings made between 1975 and 2005. Expanding on the artist’s exhibition of works on paper, ‘Daydream Nation’, at Hauser & Wirth New York last year, this presentation continues the recent in-depth exploration into Heilmann’s long-standing drawing practice and coincides with the release of a new publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, ‘Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper: 1973 – 2019’. 

Raised in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Mary Heilmann (b. 1940) completed a degree in literature, before receiving her M.A. in ceramics and sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley. Only after moving to New York in 1968 did she begin to paint and in the early 1970s establish a drawing practice that continues to this day.  

Ranging from watercolor studies to paintings on paper in their own right, ‘Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper’ brings together a selection of rarely and never-before-seen drawings that fluctuate in scale and materiality. The exhibition is a celebration of Heilmann’s talent for translating complex images and ideas into deceptively simple geometric forms and abstract gestural marks.  

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1983-86

Watercolor and graphite on paper, 17.8 x 12.7 cm / 7 x 5 in

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1987-1989

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 27.9 x 21.6 cm / 11 x 8 1/2 in

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Many of Heilmann’s most well-known and admired series – Fans, Chairs, Serapes, Grids – are represented in the installation as are drawings that have related works in important European museum collections. 'Untitled Watercolor Study' (ca. 1983 – 1986) is one of two drawings in the exhibition that are part of a series of works by Heilmann in tribute to the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian that includes ‘M.’ (1985), a painting in the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast. ‘Islands’, (1988), one of the larger watercolors on view, was made after ‘Laurens’ (1986), an oil on canvas in the collection of the De Pont Museum. 

The works on view not only demonstrate Heilmann’s work serially but also her tendency to revisit and reimagine certain arrangements of form and color. Made 15 years apart, ‘Broken Study’ (2005) is a recompilation of an early red, black and white composition, ‘Untitled Watercolor Study’ (ca. 1989) and Heilmann’s web imagery seen in ‘Blue Net’ (1991).  

As an artist known for working across mediums and for installations that playfully combine disparate works, the exhibition also includes a selection of ceramic ‘Spots’ and sculptural chairs.  

Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973–2019

Text by Alexis Lowry, Jo Applin, Ilana Savdie

Hauser & Wirth Publishers

English Paperback, 26 x 20 cm; 152pp

16 September (UK, ROW & US)

An in-depth study of Mary Heilmann’s mesmerizing works on paper that explores drawing as a form of daydreaming and memory-making for the influential abstract painter. 

Mary Heilmann’s works on paper are suffused with the same sensibility as her influential abstract paintings, a casual playfulness animating a rigorous attention to form and colour, resulting in joyful, evocative geometries. Their suggestive power reflects Heilmann’s process of what she calls ‘daydreaming’: a conjuring of the sights, sounds, and events of past and future travels, the cyclical nature of memory informing her return to various motifs across nearly five decades of work. Edited and with an introduction by curator Alexis Lowry, ‘Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973 – 2019’ includes an essay by art historian Jo Applin and a personal reflection by painter Ilana Savdie, all together offering a compelling account of this previously underexamined aspect of Heilmann’s practice. 

Artist Mary Heilman

Considered one of the preeminent contemporary Abstract painters, Mary Heilmann is best known for incorporating a fusion of personal and cultural influences and craft traditions into an artistic practice including paintings, ceramics, and furniture. 

Mary Heilmann is the subject of two major institutional exhibitions, ‘Mary Heilmann. Starry Night’ at Dia Beacon in Beacon NY and ‘Mary Heilmann. Water Way’ at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY both close in October 2025. On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art until January 2026 is ‘Mary Heilmann: Long Line,’ a site-specific installation that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Whitney Museum’s downtown building.  

Her work is included in many prominent international collections, such as those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany.

HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICH

Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich

www.hauserwirth.com

Tyler Mitchell @ Gagosian, London

Tyler Mitchell

Gagosian, London

September 15 – October 3, 2025

Tyler Mitchell

Harlem Stoop, 2024

Gelatin silver print, in artist's frame

30 x 37 1/2 inches (76.2 x 95.3 cm)

Edition of 3 + 2 AP

© Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy Gagosian

Tyler Mitchell

The Dinner Party, 2024

Gelatin silver print, in artist's frame

30 5/8 x 48 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (77.6 x 123 x 3.8 cm)

Edition of 3 + 2 AP

© Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy Gagosian

Gagosian presents an exhibition of photographs by Tyler Mitchell at its gallery in London’s historic Burlington Arcade. This marks the first public display of works from “Portrait of the Modern Dandy,” a visual essay developed for the catalogue of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the spring 2025 Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The installation at Burlington Arcade coincides with the launch of Mitchell’s first monograph with Aperture, Wish This Was Real, and features a curated selection of publications that inform and expand his practice.

 

Cover of the book Superfine: Tailoring Black Style 

(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025)

Artwork © Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Cover of the book Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real 

(New York: Aperture, 2025)

Artwork © Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Examining the historical and cultural significance of Black style from the eighteenth century through to contemporary expressions, Superfine focuses on the concept of dandyism through the lens of the African diaspora. The exhibited garments and Mitchell’s photographs together articulate how self-fashioning becomes a form of agency, distinction, and resistance.

Introducing this body of work, Tyler Mitchell notes:

In this visual essay, my aim was not only to depict visions of profound camaraderie, beauty, and joy—though that alone would have been a worthy pursuit—but to explore how Black individuals have appropriated and transformed classical European fashion into something uniquely our own. Featuring models in garments from Superfine: Tailoring Black Style alongside fabulously self-styled men in vintage or the wearer’s own attire, this project is a love letter to modern Black dandyism.

Tyler Mitchell

Untitled (Abdou Shirtless), 2024

Gelatin silver print, in artist's frame

20 x 14 5/8 inches (50.8 x 37 cm)

Edition of 3 + 2 AP

© Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy Gagosian

 

Tyler Mitchell

Untitled (Christian in Wales Bonner Cover), 2024

Archival pigment print, in artist's frame

45 x 34 1/2 inches (114.3 x 87.5 cm)

Edition of 3 + 2 AP

© Tyler Mitchell

Courtesy Gagosian

These portraits engage in a dialogue with traditions of historical studio and portrait photography, emphasizing the symbolic power of dress. Mitchell’s images reflect his ongoing interest in constructing scenes of elegance, kinship, and Black visual sovereignty.

On Saturday, September 20, from 3 to 6pm, Gagosian will host a book signing with the artist for both Wish This Was Real and the Superfine catalogue.

GAGOSIAN

28–29 Burlington Arcade, London W1J OQJ

gagosian.com

Exposition Soulages, une autre lumière. Peintures sur papier @ Musée du Luxembourg, Paris

Soulages, une autre lumière

Peintures sur papier 

Musée du Luxembourg, Paris

17 septembre 2025 - 11 janvier 2026

Pierre Soulages a toujours refusé d'établir une hiérarchie entre les différentes techniques qu'il utilise. À côté des peintures sur toile, il est également l'auteur d'un ensemble considérable de peintures sur papier qu'il a mené, avec quelques interruptions tout au long de son parcours pictural, jusqu'au début des années 2000. D'une certaine façon, on peut dire que son œuvre commence sur le papier avec, dès 1946, des peintures aux traces larges et affirmées, réalisées au brou de noix, qui vont véritablement voir son oeuvre se distinguer des autres démarches abstraites de l'époque.

En 1948, alors qu'il vient à peine de commencer à exposer, il est invité à une manifestation itinérante sur la peinture abstraite française dans les musées allemands, en compagnie d'artistes beaucoup plus âgés. C'est une de ses peintures qui est choisie pour l'affiche et va contribuer à le faire connaître.Privilégiant le brou de noix dans les premières années, Pierre Soulages reviendra souvent à cette matière qu'utilisent les  ébénistes et dont il aime les qualités de transparence et d'opacité, de luminosité également en contraste avec le blanc du papier. Il emploiera aussi l'encre et la gouache pour des oeuvres dont les formats en général restreints ne cèdent en rien à la puissance formelle et à la diversité.

L'oeuvre sur papier de Pierre Soulages qui fut longtemps conservé par l'artiste, a été moins souvent montré que les peintures sur toile et rarement rassemblé dans des expositions à part entière. Il constitue pourtant un ensemble indispensable à la compréhension de sa peinture. Cette exposition présente 130 œuvres dont plus d'une trentaine inédites.

Exposition produite par le GrandPalaisRmn

Cette exposition a bénéficié des prêts exceptionnels du Musée Soulages, Rodez.

Commissariat : Alfred Pacquement

Directeur honoraire du Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou

Soulages, une autre lumière. 

Peintures sur papier

Catalogue de l'exposition

GrandPalaisRmnEditions, 2025

208 pages, 160 illustrations, 40 €

En librairie le 10 septembre 2025

En vente dès parution dans toutes les librairies 

et sur boutiquesdemusees.fr

© GrandPalaisRmnÉditions, 2025

Sommaire

Entretien avec Colette Soulages

[avec un avant-propos d’Alfred Pacquement]

Tout a commencé sur le papier

Alfred Pacquement

Les peintures sur papier de Soulages et les expositions

Camille Morando

Les Ateliers de Soulages (extraits)

Michel Ragon

Soulages, papiers, Japon

Benoît Decron

Annexes

Présentation biographique

Expositions de peintures sur papier

Bibliographie sélective

OEuvres et documents exposés

Musée du Luxembourg

19 rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris

museeduluxembourg.fr

Sonia Gomes @ Pace Gallery, London - "É preciso não ter medo de criar" Exhibition Curated by Paulo Miyada

Sonia Gomes 

É preciso não ter medo de criar

Pace Gallery, London

October 14 – November 15, 2025

Sonia Gomes 

Raw | Cru, 2025 

© Sonia Gomes, courtesy the artist 

and Mendes Wood DM 

Photo by Ding Musa

Pace presents É preciso não ter medo de criar, the first solo exhibition in the UK by São Paulo-based artist SONIA GOMES, on view at its gallery in London. Curated by Paulo Miyada, the exhibition will feature all-new works, including the artist’s signature pendants and torsions, alongside paintings and new sculptural explorations in bronze. Sonia Gomes will sign copies of her new catalogue, Assombrar o mundo com Beleza (I Haunt the World with Beauty), at the opening reception on Monday, October 13, from 6 to 8 p.m.

One of Brazil’s foremost contemporary artists, Sonia Gomes combines second-hand textiles with everyday materials such as birdcages, driftwood, and wire to create abstract sculptures that reclaim traditions rooted in Afro-diasporic experiences and craft modes of artmaking from the margins of history. In 2015, she was the only Brazilian artist invited by the late curator Okwui Enwezor to the Arsenale exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale, and in 2018, she became the first living Black woman artist to receive a monographic exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). Last year, in 2024, she returned to Venice, showing work as part of the Holy See Pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale.

Born in 1948 in Caetanópolis, a former textile hub in Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil, Sonia Gomes has cultivated a singular practice anchored by her deft and meticulous manipulation of varied materials. Across these transformations, her approach remains rooted in gestures of care and reinforcement: sewing, tying, and wrapping.

The exhibition’s title—translated as “one must not be afraid to create”—is drawn from Clarice Lispector’s 1943 novel Near to the Wild Heart and has guided Gomes’s embrace of new materials and techniques for this show. In addition to her ongoing experimentation with found and gifted fabrics, Gomes has created bronze sculptures for the first time. These forms—casts of textile-wrapped tree burls and branches—extend the artist’s visual language, highlighting the tension between vulnerable materials and elevated finishes. This relationship recurs in a new group of wall-mounted works made from reclaimed lumber, transformed by the artist with gold leaf and fragments of a 19th-century liturgical vestment. Rectangular in form, they bring together weathered wood and gilded surface, continuing Gomes’s engagement with contrast and transformation.

A major new work included in the show, titled Tereza (2025), fuses a group of Gomes’s previously unrealized pendant works into one commanding form. Suspended from the ceiling and meandering through the exhibition space, this sculpture holds a vital, organic quality. In Brazilian Portuguese prison slang, tereza refers to the makeshift ropes used in escape attempts that are often fashioned from tied-together bedsheets and other fabrics. Gomes’s hanging works, such as this one, embody the word’s liberatory implications, allowing their textile remnants—carriers of collective and individual memory—to slip free from oblivion.

The artist’s Torção (torsion) sculptures, two of which feature in the exhibition, emerge from a single line. To create these, Gomes engages her whole body in describing the sculpture’s composition with uncoiled construction wire and steel reinforcing bars for the base. Choosing from her extensive trove of fabrics, Gomes forms the sculpture’s body by wrapping, twisting, tying, weaving, and stitching scraps of these materials around and through its skeleton. In her studio, she separates handcrafted textiles—such as laces, embroideries, and knits—from industrially made materials, treating the former as compositional tools and the latter as a color palette. In a new wall-based Torção included in the exhibition, Gomes has explored an unprecedented level of openness in her composition: for the first time leaving one extreme of the spiral-wire structure hanging freely in the air.

Other highlights include two-dimensional artworks from Gomes’s Raio de Sol (Sunbeam) series and new paintings. Throughout these, open and expansive forms layer and coalesce. These gestures, created by Gomes in Posca pen, watercolour, acrylic, thread, beads, and oil, recall the spiral forms that are deeply embedded in cyclical conceptions of time. In one work, Gomes has woven history into the present by embedding within it a 2.3 × 1.5 m length of shibori-dyed, hand-stitched cotton—crafted in two days by Bai artisans on China’s Tibetan border and first encountered by the artist in a London market in 2019—so that the fabric’s contorted surface collapses past and present into a single poetic return.

Since 2018, Sonia Gomes has been modifying six volumes of Enciclopédia de Fantasia (Encyclopaedia of Fantasy), a collection of classic children’s fables gifted to her by a friend. A video work included in the exhibition—the artist’s first foray into the medium—shows a dreamlike version of this process in which Gomes’s interventions and additions fluidly interact with the text and pages.

Concurrent with her exhibition in London, Gomes’s first-ever solo museum show in the United States, Sonia Gomes: Ó Abre Alas! The exhibit at Storm King Art Center is on view through November 10. She is also presenting works in the Glass Pavilion at Louvre-Lens, France, until early next year, and at Instituto Tomie Ohtake in November 2025.

Artist Sonia Gomes

Sonia Gomes (b. 1948, Caetanópolis) combines secondhand textiles with everyday materials, such as furniture, driftwood, and wire, to create abstract sculptures that reclaim Afro-Brazilian traditions and feminized crafts from the margins of history. Juxtaposing tensile and slack forms, Gomes’s contorted sculptures exude a corporeality and dynamism that she attributes to her love of popular Brazilian dances. Sonia Gomes uses found or gifted fabrics, which, according to her, “bring the history of the people that they belonged to.” “I give a new significance to them,” she adds. Her assemblages thus tie Brazil’s historical trajectory to the long-disregarded narratives of women, people of color, and countless anonymous individuals.

Through its recycling of used fabric, Gomes’s work also evinces a principle of thrift that is both a consequence of Brazil’s rapid and uneven industrial development and a dissenting answer to its accompanying culture of wasteful consumption and environmental destruction. As a whole, her art is marked by a decolonizing impulse, providing oblique responses to the social inequities and ecological urgencies of present-day Brazil and, more broadly, a globalized world.

Gomes’s work is represented in numerous collections around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; the Rubell Museum in Miami; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas; the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; the Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro; the Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil; both the Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi; and Tate in London.

PACE LONDON

5 Hanover Square, London 

www.pacegallery.com

Rétrospective Suzanne Duchamp @ Kunsthaus Zürich

Rétrospective Suzanne Duchamp 

Kunsthaus Zürich

Jusqu'au 7 Septembre 2025

Le Kunsthaus Zürich consacre à SUZANNE DUCHAMP la première rétrospective au monde. Ses compositions minimalistes et pourtant graphiquement marquantes, associées à des titres suggestifs comme «Usine de mes pensées», sont entrées dans l’histoire de l’art et néanmoins source d’inspiration jusqu’à nos jours. Malgré son appartenance à l’une des familles d’artistes les plus célèbres, son oeuvre est restée jusqu’à présent largement inconnue du grand public. Cette exposition, qui réunit des prêts exceptionnels provenant d’institutions publiques et de collections privées renommées, rend à Suzanne Duchamp la place de premier plan qu’elle mérite.

Dadaïste, peintre, SUZANNE DUCHAMP (1889, Blainville-Crevon – 1963, Neuilly-sur-Seine) a laissé à la postérité une oeuvre aux multiples facettes dont certains éléments figurent dans des collections réputées, mais qui pour l’essentiel est surtout appréciée d’un public d’initié(e)s. Duchamp entretenait des liens étroits avec les avant-gardes de son époque et a enrichi l’histoire de l’art d’apports très personnels. Soeur de Marcel Duchamp, de Raymond Duchamp-Villon et de Jacques Villon, elle échangeait beaucoup avec eux. En 1919, elle a épousé l’artiste suisse Jean Crotti, dont le Kunsthaus Zürich possède des oeuvres clés, et avec qui Suzanne Duchamp a occasionnellement coopéré. La dernière exposition d’ampleur consacrée aux deux artistes a eu lieu en 1983 au Centre Pompidou, à Paris, en coopération avec la Kunsthalle Bern. Il est donc grand temps de mettre à l’honneur le travail de Suzanne Duchamp et d’en montrer toute la profondeur. Par son langage visuel subtil, esthétique et plein d’humour, elle incarne une combinaison hors du commun dans le mouvement dadaïste. Quelle ville conviendrait mieux que Zurich, cité natale de Dada, pour enfin donner à cette artiste d’exception toute l’attention qu’elle mérite?

SUZANNE DUCHAMP : À LA FOIS ABSTRAITE ET FIGURATIVE

Dans son art, Suzanne Duchamp a exploré des voies variées. À Paris, dans le sillage du cubisme, elle commence par se pencher sur la fragmentation d’intérieurs intimes et de paysages urbains, avant de se tourner vers le mouvement Dada. Ses oeuvres associent peinture et poésie dans une démarche expérimentale qui joue avec différents supports et matériaux.

Même si sa peinture évolue de plus en plus vers l’abstraction dans les années 1910, Suzanne Duchamp reste toujours fidèle à certains repères visuels, renforcés par des titres énigmatiques. En 1922, pour des raisons diffuses, elle rompt inopinément avec Dada pour se tourner vers une peinture figurative aux accents souvent ironiques et naïfs.

Dans les décennies qui suivent, elle crée des oeuvres contenant un large spectre de motifs, qui se caractérisent par des expérimentations sur les pigments et par l’importance structurante du dessin. En 1949, son influente amie Katherine S. Dreier la qualifie de « peintre semi-abstraite » – ce qui est une formulation pertinente pour une oeuvre échappant à toutes les conventions de l’histoire de l’art.

UNE EXPOSITION INTÉGRANT LES TOUTES DERNIÈRES RECHERCHES

Cette rétrospective réunit les oeuvres dadaïstes de Suzanne Duchamp et des travaux datant de ses phases antérieures et postérieures de création. Talia Kwartler, commissaire invitée, a étudié pendant plusieurs années l’oeuvre de Suzanne Duchamp et soutenu une thèse de doctorat sur cette artiste au University College de Londres. En 2024, elle a été chargée de cours à l’université de Zurich sur le thème des femmes dans le mouvement Dada.

La détermination de Talia Kwartler a permis de transformer la présentation prévue en une vaste rétrospective, la première jamais consacrée à cette artiste, élaborée avec Cathérine Hug, commissaire au Kunsthaus et spécialiste du mouvement Dada. L’exposition s’inscrit ainsi dans la longue tradition des présentations de Dada organisées au Kunsthaus Zürich depuis 1966, et peut être considérée comme un événement majeur dans la recherche en histoire de l’art. Réunissant près de 50 tableaux, 20 travaux sur papier ainsi que des documents d’archives rares et des photographies d’époque, cette rétrospective offre une vue d’ensemble de toute l’oeuvre de Suzanne Duchamp. De nombreux travaux n’ont été redécouverts qu’au terme d’intenses recherches. Parmi les prêteurs figurent des institutions comme le MoMA de New York, le Philadelphia Museum, l’Art Institute de Chicago, le Centre Pompidou de Paris, la Bibliothèque nationale de France et la Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet à Paris, le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, mais aussi d’importantes collections privées comme la Bluff Collection et la collection de Francis M. Naumann et Marie T. Keller. Cette rétrospective a vu le jour en étroite collaboration avec l’Association Duchamp Villon Crotti.

SUZANNE DUCHAMP : PUBLICATION

À l’occasion de l’exposition, la première monographie consacrée à Suzanne Duchamp vient de paraître, avec de nombreuses reproductions. L’ouvrage comporte une biographie détaillée rédigée par Talia Kwartler, ainsi que des articles d’historiennes de l’art comme Carole Boulbès, Cathérine Hug et Effie Rentzou, auxquels s’ajoutent des perspectives artistiques de Jean-Jacques Lebel (interview) et Amy Sillman (images). La postface est signée Anne Berest, autrice de best-sellers. Cet ouvrage de 192 pages est paru aux éditions Hatje Cantz.

Cette rétrospective est une coopération avec la Kunsthalle Schirn de Francfort (10 octobre 2025 - 11 janvier 2026), où le commissariat est assuré par Ingrid Pfeiffer.

KUNSTHAUS ZURICH  

Heimplatz, 8001 Zurich

www.kunsthaus.ch

Retrospective Suzanne Duchamp 

Kunsthaus Zürich, 6 Juin - 7 Septembre 2025

Giacometti / Marwan Obsessions Exhibition @ Institut Giacometti, Paris

GIACOMETTI / MARWAN OBSESSIONS

Institut Giacometti, Paris

21 October 2025 - 21 January 2026

In the coming autumn, Institut Giacometti in Paris will present the exhibition GIACOMETTI / MARWAN OBSESSIONS, an original encounter between two artists who, having chosen to work in a country different from their birth country - France and Germany respectively - questioned the issues around modernity from two different cultural spaces: Europe and the Middle-East. Alberto Giacometti and MARWAN turned the representation of the head into the core of an enduring research that established their position as artists. This exhibition, the first joint presentation of their works, proposes a trail in which surrealism and MARWAN’s first works (1962-1972), drawings, large heads and sculpted portraits, echo one another, asserting a strong connection between visual art research and reflection on the human. 

Marwan Kassab-Bachi, called MARWAN, was born in Damascus in 1934. After having studied Arabic literature at the University of Damascus, determined to embrace an artistic career, politically committed and highly conscious of the mutations taking place in his country following colonialism, he settled in 1957 in Berlin, the epicentre of the Cold War. Like Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck, also students at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Berlin, he chose figuration, breaking from the informal art dominating West-Germany at the time. For him, it was not a position from which to confront the traumas of recent European history but a theatre for the intimate.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Giacometti also resisted the attraction of informal abstraction, reiterating his commitment to figuration and the representation of the human. From 1919, and even more from 1935, when he returned to working with a model, it was on heads that were focused his questioning on the perception of reality.

From 1985 to his death in 2016, MARWAN took Heads as his sole subject. Before that, after he arrived in Berlin in 1957, his first works (1962-1972) were portraits and intimate scenes, whose framing and execution express the challenges of being alive that echo Giacometti’s works like Mother and daughter, The Cage and Walking Woman from 1932.

From 1964 and 1972, MARWAN’s first works were focused on figures with deformed bodies, “portraits” of icons of Arab modernity: the Iraqi poet Bader Chaker al Sayyab, the political thinker Munif al-Razzaz, both exiled from their country, persecuted for their ideas. All seem to be suffused with a strange melancholy.

His year as artist in residence at la Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 1973, marked a break. He began a new series of large format paintings in which heads, painted in broad sinuous touches size up the visitors.

MARWAN linked those Heads-landscapes to the outlines and colours of the Syrian countryside. With the still life and puppets coming after, he continued to experiment with colour while placing the human at distance. From 1983, he went back to tall Heads, endowed with a cosmic character, covering the totality of the support, a series uninterrupted till his death.

MARWAN worked little with models, and his huge Heads have the quality of apparitions. They are strangely close to Giacometti’s post-war plasters and bronzes, remarkable for their spiky matter. Like those, the Heads emerge from a profusion of touches, marks that create their own space and in which only the eyes and a wide red mouth, like a horizontal stroke, arise. Clay, plaster, drawings, paintings, all the mediums Giacometti used embody his intense and involved attention to the model. From the study of his close relatives, his wife Annette and his brother Diego, to the large heads in plaster from the beginning of the 1960s, Giacometti kept, even in his work from memory, the reminiscence of the face-to-face with the model. In this observation, there’s no realist purpose, but the manifestation of a gesture repeated, at times erased and absolutely necessary that grounds the existence of the artist as a human being. Here too Giacometti and MARWAN connect.

Curator: Françoise Cohen

GIACOMETTI / MARWAN. OBSESSIONS - The catalogue

Catalogue under the direction of Françoise Cohen, exhibition curator

Co-edited by Fondation Giacometti, Paris / Fage éditions, Lyon

Bilingual French / English, 122 pages, 16.5 x 2.5 cm

Texts by Françoise Cohen and Rasha Salti

A not previously published interview of MARWAN by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Unpublished extracts of the artist’s journal

INSTITUT GIACOMETTI

5 rue Victor-Schoelcher, 75014 Paris

www.fondation-giacometti.fr