Simon Hantaï

Curated by Molly Warnock, this presentation features eleven canvases spanning more than two decades, offering a nuanced and comprehensive view of the Hungarian-born French painter's innovative body of work.

The mature work of Antoni Tàpies, Simon Hantaï and Pierre Soulages finds each artist addressing their materials with determined irreverence. Each in his own way has pushed painting to its sculptural limits: Tàpies with the introduction of sand, cement, marble dust and objects into his painted surfaces; Hantaï in laboriously bundling and folding canvases before approaching them with a brush; Soulages, in using thick oil paint as a material to be moulded and gouged.

Timothy Taylor is honoured to present Freeform, an exhibition of works by Jean Dubuffet, Simon Hantaï and Charlotte Perriand. Presented is a meeting of art and design through a dialogue of formal structure and organic forms, as defined by three French pioneers working across mediums of painting, sculpture and furniture.

On View – a four-part presentation at Timothy Taylor 16×34 – will unveil an evolving exhibition over the course of a year. Each iteration will take place in the intermediary period between the gallery’s exhibitions, for the duration of approximately one month, with four episodes in total throughout 2017. On View functions as a group exhibition, separated into distinct parts, with the broader conversation between the works revealing itself as the year unfolds.

When Simon Hantaï unlocked his now renowned pliage method in 1960, the Hungarian-born, Paris-based artist achieved such overwhelming success in France that it would eventually force him to completely withdraw from the art world. Often referred to as ‘a silence’ – or, as Alfred Pacquement more accurately described, a ‘critical silence’ – Hantaï’s exit was less a retirement than a period of reflection and intellectual consolidation. From 1982 onwards he made no new paintings, and would seldom exhibit, despite consistent invitations from dedicated curators.

This exhibition brings together the work of four artists who were instrumental in the evolution of post-war European abstraction, and looks at the different ways they invigorated their practice against the backdrop of an increasingly confident US cultural scene. Paris continued to be the nexus of European arts, literature and philosophy after the war, but it was clear that artists had to abandon the illusion that art could change society, and instead develop the notion of the artist as a liberated self-reliant individual. This impulse lead to painterly explorations with raw and unaesthetic materials and techniques, the use of paint as a flowing and vital medium and the use of impulsive and spontaneous lines and gestures.