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American renewals of geometric abstractions

Far from Abstract Expressionism, a group of American artists who rubbed shoulders, some of them sharing important moments of friendship in Paris, set off along the path of geometric abstraction, with simple forms made up of flat areas of colour. This was particularly true of Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman and Ralph Coburn. At first sight, they fall within a major trend on the French scene, championed in Paris by gallery owners such as Denise René and exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. However, the issues at stake in their research were quite different: “I didn’t agree with the geometric abstraction of this period: it was too much the doing of purely formalist followers,” summarised Kelly. The latter wrote that he wanted to make “concrete art”, pure representation, without transformation or abstraction of reality. The American artists in question here were extremely interested in the structure of the canvas and its spatial organisation.

Kelly thus created a series of works in a geometric style that were, he said, the “exact copy” of motifs that he found. Several American artists who settled in France adopted anti-composition in turn, an aspect largely non-existent on the Parisian scene apart from François Morellet, a French painter who shared the same preoccupations and fraternised with Coburn, Kelly and Youngerman. In this respect, the French painter stated: “Our big hobby horse of the fifties, the absence of composition, all-over, etc. For me, it was a moral thing, composition is symmetrical, asymmetrical, good taste.” This renewal of geometric abstraction through the absence of composition was accompanied by an approach in which the work became quintessentially incomplete, which notably allowed the introduction of movement and the exploration of techniques invented by several American artists on French soil such as Robert Breer, Frank Joseph Malina and William Klein.

Circumventing composition

Chance and modules

After the war, the Surrealist art of Jean Arp, who created works according to the laws of chance throughout his career, gained recognition in both France and the United States. He was an inspiring figure for many American artists, including Ellsworth Kelly, Ralph Coburn and Jack Youngerman, who visited him in his studio in Meudon in 1950, just like Jean-François Koenig who created collages in the vein of the French artist. The different friends were impressed by the possibilities offered by this acceptance of chance as co-creator of the work. For them, relying on chance was a way of avoiding composition. It was also what enabled work using modules and repetitive and anonymous shapes, developed by Ralph Coburn and Jack Youngerman and also explored by François Morellet, with whom they became friends and exhibited in 1952 at the Bourlaën gallery in Nantes. Coburn suggested hanging his works made up of several panels on the wall randomly, while at his Parisian beginnings Youngerman developed networks of lines that seemed to mathematically produce each other. Modularity thus established itself as a principle of anonymised composition that could be endlessly deployed. From then on, chance and the module would combine to highlight the random dimension of the work. This anonymity of the work, composed by juxtaposing simple elements, made possible the idea of a creative act not entirely controlled by the artist.

Jack Youngerman, Composition White on Black, 1954

On a square canvas covered with flat black paint, Jack Youngerman draws a continuous network of fine broken white lines with a ruler. Youngerman took his first drawing lessons at the Naval Officer School in North Carolina. Benefiting from the G.I. Bill, he completed his studies and then turned to art. Faced with the lack of places in American art schools, he came to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1947. There he befriended Ellsworth Kelly, César, and Eduardo Paolozzi, and later François Morellet and Robert Breer. He married the actress Delphine Seyrig.

In the early 1950s, he discovered two opposing trends: lyrical abstraction and constructivism. He sought a more personal synthesis marked especially by the works of Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, and Wassily Kandinsky.

Ralph Coburn, Eight-Panel Arranged by Choice Composition, 1951

Ralph Coburn drew black lines in ink on paper which he then cut into squares, of which only eight are assembled into this abstract composition. The artist chose the combination of modules or delegated it to who would be presenting the work. For conservation reasons, it has been fixed by gluing, whereas Coburn conceived it as a set of constantly repositionable elements.

Coburn is continuing his work here, which began during his first visit to France the previous year. Geometric abstraction influenced the rigor of his lines and the grid structure of his compositions. Inspired by surrealist experiences (exquisite cadavers) and the work of Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber, he went beyond the notion of chance to focus on choice in a modular work and incorporated the idea of collaboration.

François Morellet, Painting, 1952

Conceived as a systematic repetition of yellow or white squares, themselves crossed by horizontal or vertical bands of opposite color, this composition illustrates François Morellet’s programmatic system. From 1950, he developed this strict geometric abstraction, based on a serial principle defined in advance. This is reinforced during a visit to the Alhambra in Granada where the artist interprets the intertwining of Islamic art as an all-over.

Morellet’s work, marked by the notion of module, grid, and serial programming later evolves into rules leaving an important place to chance. This is the influence of his friend Ellsworth Kelly who tells him about his visits in 1950 to Jean Arp’s studio. Kelly was inspired at that time by the seemingly random duo-collages of Arp and Sophie Taeuber.

Jean Arp, Celestial Objects, 1962

In this relief painting, three groups of curvilinear shapes, cut from wood and superimposed, form a regular and harmonious composition. The moving ovals, signs of metamorphosis, are a favorite form of the artist. It was in the 1920s that Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber began to develop an abstract vocabulary inspired by natural and organic forms, offering a counterpoint to the geometric art championed by Mondrian or the Constructivists. In his wake, the American critic Alfred Barr could thus theorize in 1936 an opposition between two abstractions: one rational and geometric, the other intuitive and “biomorphic.” Since his first relief paintings which appeared in the Dada movement, Arp also practiced the principle of random composition, dictated by the laws of chance or the collective gesture, in raw materials, seeking to make the artist’s intention disappear.

John-Franklin Koenig, Untitled, December 1951

This work articulates itself by the juxtaposition of simple geometric shapes. The treatment of light areas allows one to guess the dark color of the paper. The arrangement of the gouache recalls the pasted papers that John-Franklin Koenig produced at the end of the 1940s. Marked by the collages of Jean Arp, which he discovered during an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947, the artist began to work around this technique.

Franco-American born in Seattle, Koenig landed in Europe in December 1944 and was wounded in the Ardennes. A recipient of the G.I. Bill for five years, in 1945 he enrolled in painting classes at the G.I. University of Biarritz. In 1948, the artist moved to Paris where he studied languages at the Sorbonne and the Alliance Française. Supported by the Arnaud Gallery, he wrote regularly for the review Cimaise in the 1950s.

Alexander Calder, 6-5-1-4, Circa 1950

The title of the work reflects its organization: groups of 6, 5, 1, and 4 circular metal pieces, of different sizes, are arranged to obtain a perfect balance. In 1930, the discovery of the works of Piet Mondrian in his Parisian studio inspired the artist, who transposed in space geometric shapes in pure Mondrian colors. Calder thus overturned the definition of sculpture, now also conceived in movement. The generation of American artists who arrived in Paris after World War II found, in Calder’s mobiles, the confirmation that the work can unfold in space and its perception evolve over time. Robert Breer, like Calder, participated in the exhibition Le Mouvement [The Movement] at the Denise René Gallery in 1955.

Experimenting with movement

One of the father figures for certain Americans who settled in Paris at the end of the Second World War was Alexander Calder, an American from the previous generation who lived in Paris from 1926 to 1933 and returned there regularly. Calder notably befriended Youngerman and Kelly. The creator of the famous mobiles, he introduced movement into sculpture, as did (in his wake) Helen Phillips, an American artist living in Paris who mixed with him on several occasions. For many American artists in France at the time, the introduction of movement made it possible to go beyond the limits of the geometric abstraction that they saw in Parisian galleries: William Klein took photographs of objects that tended to capture their movement – and which he also presented on moving panels, Frank Joseph Malina added motors to his “cybernetic” works and electropaintings, while Robert Breer animated abstract pictorial forms in experimental films. In addition, Ralph Coburn invited the viewer to participate, creating works open to their changing environment: he thus made painting a work in movement, open to multiple future developments in the vein of works by Calder in perpetual transformation.

William Klein, Untitled, Circa 1952

Movement is at the heart of this photographic series. William Klein uses the photogram process to animate abstract shapes and obtain a very graphic appearance. He places pre-cut masks on a photosensitive sheet and moves it when exposed to light, capturing movement and sometimes blurry effects. A war veteran, Klein came to Paris in 1948. After studying at the Sorbonne, he briefly followed the courses of Fernand Léger. From 1950, he became interested in photography and the representation of movement through this medium. The idea came to him when he took pictures of one of his works, a set of black and white mobile panels made up of geometric patterns. He then managed to capture the rotation by blurring and obtained effects different from those of painting.

William Klein, Untitled, Circa 1952

William Klein worked on a series of photograms in a darkroom focusing on simple geometric elements, such as the rhombus. On the photosensitive paper, he put a mask with a pre-cut shape and then exposed it to the light. This unique copy is then photographed to obtain a negative. This technique allowed him to enlarge the image but also to make collages of several negatives to obtain more complex shapes when printing. This work consists of photographs pasted on panels held by a metal rod allowing the elements to rotate independently. This device invites the viewer to intervene in determining the composition. This work is similar to the work he did in 1952 for an interior project by Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti, where he designed pivoting partitions with geometric shapes in black and white.

Frank Joseph Malina, Orbits III, Spring 1959

In 1956, Frank Malina invented the Lumidyne system: a device closed by a screen on which a colored composition is animated by slow movements, produced by an electric mechanism hidden in the painting. Malina questioned the relationship between technique, art, and science far beyond the simple debate between the different abstractions in post-war art. He quickly established himself as one of the pioneers of kinetic art.

The title Orbits III recalls the atypical career of Malina. After a brilliant career as an astronautical engineer at Caltech which he interrupted just after the war, followed by a position as scientific adviser to UNESCO, in 1953 he began a career as an artist in Paris. His work and his numerous publications bear witness to his commitment to a dialogue between art and science.

Robert Breer, Untitled, 1954

From 1952, Robert Breer experimented with a form of cinema, setting in motion forms that seemed to have escaped from his painted works. This canvas pursues the idea of animating geometric shapes inherited from concrete art. The artist moved away from orthogonality in favor of curving lines, deforming rectangles, giving way to a certain floating. The independent forms seem to move freely on the canvas.

Following his arrival in Paris in 1949, Breer befriended American artists – such as Jack Youngerman – and European artists – such as Jean Tinguely, with whom he was very close. The influence of Jean Arp’s work is evident in his approach to chance and movement. From 1958, Breer gave up painting to devote himself to sculpture and video. He moved to New York the following year.

Robert Breer, Form Phases IV, 1954

This animated film belongs to the Form Phases series, produced by Robert Breer starting in 1952. That same year, while visiting his father in Detroit, Breer borrowed his camera in order to film a flip book that he conceptualized: the flatness of the colors and the geometric forms animate themselves on film. For this fourth opus, the last in the series, the artist utilized a different approach: he filmed the projection of slides which he painted and cut upwards. Geometric shapes emerge, transform, and move freely on the screen.

Breer presented it to the Denise René Gallery in 1955, next to his paintings. Living in Paris since 1949, the artist was marked by Dadaist and surrealist experimental cinema, notably the films of Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Léger. The movement became one of his leitmotifs in painting, sculpture, and video.

Helen Philips, Growth, 1961

This mobile sculpture, playing on the linear qualities of metal rods, deploys dynamically in space, capturing the light and reflecting the shadows. The aerial geometric constructions that the artist developed during this period incorporated her interest in modularity, which emerged from the work of architect Richard Buckminster Fuller and her discovery of the writings of mathematical biologist D’Arcy Thompson on the geometric growth of natural forms.

Trained in San Francisco, Helen Phillips moved to Paris for the first time in 1936. She discovered surrealism there, bonded with Alexander Calder, and practiced printmaking at Atelier 17, led by Stanley William Hayter whom she married in 1940. After having lived during the war in New York where she frequented the avant-garde of American abstraction, she returned to France in 1950 and settled there permanently.

Simplification of forms

Towards a new concrete art

Reproduction, the work-as-object and at times a calculated reference to the real without ever letting oneself become trapped in any existing system of representation also constituted a new approach provided by American artists in Paris, notably Kelly who used the term “Already made” for his art as object. His work Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris is emblematic of this approach: composed of two stretched canvases, one painted white and the other grey, inserted into a single black frame, Window veers between a three-dimensional assembly and a geometric painting. For Kelly, it was the “exact copy” of the window of the Museum of Modern Art, then situated in the current Palais de Tokyo in Paris: “instead of creating a painting – the interpretation of something seen or an illustration of invented content, I found an object and ‘presented’ it as being solely itself”. Kelly was thus following in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp and his famous readymades. The theme of the window is also frequently found in Coburn’s works, while in the late fifties Youngerman developed a Hard Edge painting characterised by areas of flat colour with abrupt transitions, particularly inspired by Henri Matisse’s paper cut-outs.

François Morellet, Hexagones à côtés bleus et verts [Hexagons with Blue and Green Sides], 1953

A series of identical hexagons juxtaposed in an elemental composition is repeated over the entire surface. François Morellet defines in advance the principle of a frame, aiming to replace the subjectivity of the artist with a mathematical rationality. In this visual grid, the individual gesture disappears behind the structure and materiality of the work.

In 1952, Morellet met Jack Youngerman at the Abstractions exhibition at the Bourlaouën Gallery in Nantes. The following year, he befriended Ellsworth Kelly, so much so that his parents put the penniless American in a maid’s room in Paris. Morellet’s artistic approach echoes the works of his two American friends, as well as that of Ralph Coburn.

Jack Youngerman, Tiger, 1961

Two forms overlap with one another. The first, in flat black, almost entirely covers the white of the canvas. It envelops the second, off-center, in a bright orange contrasting violently with the black.

Jack Youngerman’s work, marked by geometric rigor when it started in Paris, is then tinted with the influence of Jean Arp and Henri Matisse.

He met the first in his studio in 1950 and was particularly interested in flexible forms in his engravings, offering a synthesis between constructivism and biomorphism. Matisse’s ink drawings also mark his work. Youngerman rounded his line to cover his paintings with simplified organic shapes, with strong color contrasts. Youngerman left in 1956, settling with his family in Manhattan.

Ralph Coburn, View from the Artist’s Studio, Sanary-sur-Mer, 1950

As if through an open window, Ralph Coburn is inspired by the landscape observed from his studio in Sanary-sur-Mer. Large white edges crop the opening, and black and red lines divide the landscape into areas of color. The vertical and horizontal planes merge and the simplification of the elements leads to abstraction. Far from the notion of representation, the work challenges the famous definition of Leon Battista Alberti seeing in the painting a “window opening on to the world,” and appears as an echo to Window by Ellsworth Kelly, in the same room.

Coburn began his career in Boston in the 1940s. He was an assistant at the Boris Mirski Gallery when he became friends with Kelly who invited him to join him in France in 1949. Shortly after his arrival, Coburn stayed in Sanary, where he would return three times thereafter.

Ellsworth Kelly, Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, November 1949

This foundational work by Ellsworth Kelly consists of two superimposed paintings joined by a black frame: the white canvas is presented right side up, the gray upside down, crossed by two wooden sticks. It was presented at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles as Relief blanc et noir [White and Black Relief] before receiving, in 1968, its current title which reveals the origin of its creation: Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris. Kelly does not represent or interpret anything. He makes an object, between relief assembly and abstract painting. His gesture consists of isolating and copying a pre-existing pattern.

A war veteran, in 1948, Kelly returned to France on the G.I. Bill scholarship for six years. Influenced by geometric abstraction and the importance of structure, he then integrated notions of chance and modulus, finding his patterns in the objects around him.