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| European Informalism | |
|---|---|
| Name | European Informalism |
| Years | Mid-1940s–1960s |
| Countries | France; Italy; Spain; Germany; Belgium; Netherlands; United Kingdom; Austria; Switzerland; Portugal; Yugoslavia; Poland |
European Informalism
European Informalism emerged in the mid-1940s as a fracturing response to World War II, existentialist thought, and the collapse of prewar cultural orders. It encompasses a range of postwar painting and sculptural practices across France, Italy, Spain, Germany and other European states that emphasized gesture, materiality, and anti-academic modes of expression. Practitioners and institutions associated with Informalism intersected with contemporaneous currents such as Existentialism, Surrealism, Dada, and Abstract Expressionism, while engaging forums like the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and national salons.
Informalism arose from wartime ruptures that implicated figures and institutions including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, Paul Éluard, and critics at journals such as Cahiers d'Art, Minotaure, L'Esprit Nouveau, and La Révolution Surréaliste. The movement developed alongside exhibitions and organizations like the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Salon de Mai, Galerie Maeght, and the postwar recoveries in cities such as Paris, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, Zurich, and Brussels. Political and cultural backdrops involved events such as the End of World War II in Europe, the Marshall Plan, the Cold War, and national reckonings following the Spanish Civil War and the Italian Resistance, which shaped networks of patrons, critics, and curators including Lionello Venturi, André Malraux, and Eugène Ionesco.
France became a central node with artists and groups connected to galleries and salons: figures like Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Georges Mathieu, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Wols (Wolfram Schulze), and Zao Wou-Ki appearing alongside institutions such as Galerie Maeght and Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Italy hosted movements and artists including Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Emilio Vedova, Franco Angeli, Enrico Baj, and the Arte Informale debates curated at venues like the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Quadriennale di Roma. Spain’s scene included Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, Eduardo Chillida, Gonzalo Sicre, and shows at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and regional academies in Barcelona and Madrid. In Germany and Austria, practitioners such as Emil Schumacher, Karl Otto Götz, Anselm Kiefer’s precursors, and exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunsthalle Basel connected to debates involving critics like Wilhelm Pinder and curators of documenta I. Belgium and the Netherlands featured artists including Antoni Clavé’s contemporaries, Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Corneille (artist), and groups around CoBrA, which overlapped in circulation with Informalist tendencies. Other figures relevant across borders include Hans Arp, Jean Arp, Alfredo Hlito, Wifredo Lam, Eduardo Paolozzi, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Giacomo Manzù, and collectors like Peggy Guggenheim and Paul Rosenberg.
Informalist painters and sculptors foregrounded material processes and anti-illusionistic surfaces, employing ash, tar, burlap, sand, lead, and encaustic. Practitioners such as Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Pierre Soulages, and Antoni Tàpies explored surface trauma through techniques including collage, décollage, impasto, and physical manipulation of canvas via puncture and slashing. Theoretical interlocutors like Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Herbert Read, and Michel Tapié articulated concepts of «art informel», «aléatoire», and the «art autre», while exhibitions curated by Michel Tapié and critics at Chroniques de France promoted an appreciation of chance, eros, and material autonomy. Crossovers with sculptural practices occurred in works by Alberto Giacometti, Eduardo Chillida, Isamu Noguchi, Amedeo Modigliani’s afterimages, and textile or assemblage pieces appearing in collections such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.
Contemporary critical response involved high-profile intellectuals and journalists including Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Michel Tapié, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and editors at Artforum, The Burlington Magazine, and Partisan Review. Debates compared Informalism to Abstract Expressionism, the Tachisme movement, and American gestural painting by figures like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline. Institutional recognition was signaled by awards and exhibitions involving the Venice Biennale and prizes such as the Praemium Imperiale’s antecedents and national art prizes in France, Italy, and Spain. Critical positions ranged from celebration of material authenticity by advocates like Michel Tapié to skepticism from formalists and conservative critics associated with establishments such as the Royal Academy of Arts and national academies in Paris and Rome.
Major exhibitions and institutions that showcased Informalist work included the Venice Biennale, Documenta, Salon d'Automne, Salon de Mai, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Tate Gallery, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Basel, Museum of Modern Art (New York) exchanges, and regional museums like the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, and Fundació Joan Miró. Curators and critics such as Lionel Trilling, Marcel Duchamp, André Masson, André Breton, Michel Tapié, and Rene d'Harnoncourt played roles in framing exhibitions and museum acquisitions that integrated Informalist artists into international circuits.
The legacy of Informalist practices informs contemporary discourse around materiality, postwar trauma, and anti-heroic gestures in exhibitions at institutions like the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and retrospectives at the Museo Reina Sofía. Recent scholarship and curatorial projects connect Informalism with postcolonial and transnational narratives involving collections and archives at the Getty Research Institute, The Morgan Library & Museum, National Gallery (Prado's collections collaborations), and university programs at Courtauld Institute of Art and Columbia University. Reappraisals examine intersections with artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter’s early trajectories, dialogues with Minimalism and Arte Povera, and influences on contemporary practitioners shown at spaces including Whitechapel Gallery, Fondazione Prada, Haus der Kunst, and private foundations associated with collectors like Saatchi Gallery founders.
Category:Art movements