Black on white, white on black, Simon Hantaï

The Larry Gagosian contemporary art gallery at Le Bourget airport proposes an exhibition of some twenty black and white works, paintings and serigraphs by Simon Hantaï (large formats produced between 1959 and 1997). The exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery presents four monumental oil and acrylic paintings.

Simon Hantaï was born in Hungary in 1922 and studied art in Budapest. He lived in Paris in 1948 to study then had decided to stay in France where he joined André Breton and the surrealist group. He broke with the ideology of the surrealists after discovering the work of Jackson Pollock. He then began working on monumental works and turned to abstraction. Simon Hantaï began working on a technique that mixed folding and painting in 1960: the canvas was folded or knotted and painted, the fold (or knot) was then undone, revealing patterns with alternating painted and unpainted areas.