Whether it’s before or after the Second World War, Europe has never lost its status as a world center of artistic innovations. Burri, Calzolari, Tàpies, and Venet renewed the artistic language by incorporating materials from the everyday world, such as cellotex, salt, sand, and tar. Hantaï and Klein questioned the idea of gestuality in painting, a concept central to Hartung, Mathieu, and Schneider. Penalba went beyond the rule of figurative expression in sculpture in the search for visual poetry through abstract forms.

To illustrate this constant search for innovations, we devote our entire stand to the project Intersections with works by artists Alberto Burri, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Simon Hantaï, Hans Hartung, Yves Klein, Georges Mathieu, Serge Poliakoff, Gérard Schneider, Antoni Tàpies, and Bernar Venet. We conceive our presentation as a spatial and visual conversation to highlight the effects created by different textures and surfaces chosen by these artists, united in their refusal of all preconceptions about how to make art. These artists are enduring figures in the history of abstract art.