20th-century French Art - Post World War II

Post World War II

The French art scene immediately after the war went roughly in two directions. There were those who continued in the artistic experiments, especially surrealism, from before the war, and there were those who took on the new Abstract Expressionism and action painting from New York and tried them in a French manner (Tachism or L'art informel). Parallel to both of these tendencies, Jean Dubuffet dominated the early post-war years while exploring childlike drawings, graffiti and cartoons in a variety of media.

In 1960, Pierre Restany and Yves Klein founded the New Realism movement (in French: Nouveau Réalisme), and a joint declaration was signed on October 27, 1960 by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963. The members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they would take parts and incorporate them into their works. They sought to bring life and art closer together, and has often been compared with Pop Art. Yves Klein had nude women roll around in blue paint and throw themselves at canvases; Niki de Saint-Phalle created bloated and vibrant plastic figures; Arman gathered together found objects in boxed or resin-coated assemblages; César Baldaccini produced a series of large compressed object-sculptures (similar to Chamberlain's crushed automobiles); Daniel Spoerri used meals and food as artsistic material.

Associated in various ways with New Realism, the artists of the international Fluxus movement – named and loosely organized in 1962 by George Maciunas (1931–78), a Lithuanian-born American artist – encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Outsourcing part of the creative process to commercial fabricators was not usually part of Fluxus practice. The most significant French Fluxus artist, Ben Vautier incorporated graffiti and found objects into his work.

Other artist in the period include Victor Vasarely who invented Op-Art by designing sophisticated optical patterns.

In May 1968, the radical youth movement, through their atelier populaire, produced a great deal of poster-art protesting the moribund policies of president Charles de Gaulle.

For a chronological list of artists from the period, go here.