NAHMAD CONTEMPORARY Newsletter | September 2021 View this email in your browser (https://mailchi.mp/deee8c84565c/nahmad-contemporary-newsletter-september-13431247?e=c39411af91) http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/ N O W O P E N G E O R G E S M A T H I E U Sept. 9 - Oct. 23, 2021 U P T O W N N A H M A D C O N T E M P O R A R Y | 9 8 0 M a d i s o n A v e n u e http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/georges-mathieu In celebration of the 100th birthday of Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), Nahmad Contemporary and Perrotin, in collaboration with the artist’s estate, are pleased to mount the first extensive survey of Georges Mathieu's practice in the United States. Spread across two New York venues, the presentation reevaluates Mathieu’s significant contributions to the development of post-war abstraction. As a key pioneer of Action Painting, the exhibition pays particular attention to the artist’s monumental paintings, which exemplify his commitment to the encounter between body and canvas. To mark the occasion, we are pleased to publish the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s life and work, with an essay by Germano Celant and an interview with Nancy Spector. Georges Mathieu was one of the foremost French artists active during the 1950s and 60s. The centenary of his birth offers an ideal occasion to look back at the career of an artist and theorist who dedicated his life to an emotive, gestural, and highly nonrepresentational form of abstraction that had no correlative in the empirical world. The founder of Lyrical Abstraction, a movement that rejected the legacy of European geometric abstraction launched by Picasso’s Cubism and Mondrian’s De Stijl, Mathieu deeply influenced generations of artists working in the realm of performance and action-based painting. — Nancy Spector D O W N T O W N P E R R O T I N | 1 3 0 O r c h a r d S t r e e t https://leaflet.perrotin.com/view/116 Playing a decisive role in postwar painting, Mathieu diverted from the geometrical abstractions dominating the previous era by forging a visual language that favored form over content and gesture over intent, and harnessed uninhibited creative expression. During the 1950s, Mathieu executed large canvases before audiences, a performative aspect that rivaled Gutai, the Japanese avant-garde group, and anticipated the work of Yves Klein and the “Happenings” in the United States. In 1952, Alexander Iolas gave Mathieu his first solo U.S. exhibition at the Stable Gallery. On the occasion of the show, The New York Times called the artist, “one of the most fervid of contemporary French abstractionists,” and in 1954, the newspaper affirmed him an abstract expressionist as powerful in Paris as Willem de Kooning is for Manhattan. Clement Greenberg considered him, “the strongest of all new European painters. Georges Mathieu, the transatlantic painter I admire most.” Despite Mathieu’s ardent popularity at the onset of his career and the extensive acquisition of his paintings by major American and European museums early on, the artist has largely been overlooked in recent decades—his last major exhibition in the United States took place forty-two years ago at Wildenstein gallery in New York. As such, this exhibition offers a unique opportunity to reintroduce Mathieu’s work and interpret the development of his art and his legacy with a fresh perspective. The show takes place at both Nahmad Contemporary and Perrotin galleries in New York and features an ensemble of over 50 major paintings of every period, ranging from the 1950s to the last paintings executed in the 1980s and early 1990s. This celebratory exhibition presents works from the artist’s private collection, many of which are exhibited for the first time. Additionally, the show also includes important works from museums and institutions such as the Albright- Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Michigan State University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Phillips Collection, Washington DC; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. press release (http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/georges-mathieu) W A T C H N O W Curator Nancy Spector discusses Georges Mathieu's legacy (https://vimeo.com/583414697) https://vimeo.com/583414697 P A S T E X H I B I T I O N http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/georges-mathieu-monumental-paintings/installation-views/2 Georges Mathieu: Monumental Paintings Jan. 11 – Feb. 23, 2019 more info (http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/georges-mathieu-monumental-paintings/installation-views/2) NAHMAD CONTEMPORARY 980 MADISON AVE ⎮ NEW YORK ⎮ NY ⎮10075 [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) +1 646 449 9118 Monday-Saturday, 10AM-6PM http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/ https://www.instagram.com/nahmadcontemporary/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/Nahmad-Contemporary-761104604029387/ https://www.twitter.com/Joe_Nahmad/ Installation view, Nahmad Contemporary. Photographs by Tom Powel Imaging Installation view, Perrotin, Photograph by Guillaume Ziccarelli © Georges Mathieu / ADAGP, Paris & ARS, New York, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. ============================================================ If you received this email in error or no longer wish to receive these mailings, you can click here to ** unsubscribe (https://nahmadcontemporary.us17.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=b70673086d081550990c36524&id=62f68f98d0&e=c39411af91&c=08dbc90038)