Hanina Fine Arts is delighted to present a selection of works by artists of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles which was established in Paris in 1946 to celebrate abstract art and affirm its place as the predominant aesthetic of the post-war era. The phrase was originally coined by Guillaume Appolinaire, and the association evolved out of the Abstraction Création group of the 1930’s. The first committee was led by Fredo Sidès and included Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, and Albert Gleizes, frustrated with the Establishment’s slowness to embrace the abstract movement. By 1948 it had grown to include artists from 17 nations, and Solomon Guggenheim joined the committee. The association marked a bold transition from the Occupation years when the Nazis prohibited Abstract Art as “degenerate”. The Réalités Nouvelles was to define a new era of progressive liberty, not of a singular ideology, but a diversity of “new realities”.     

The exhibition brings together works by core Réalités Nouvelles artists including Marcelle Cahn’s “Composition”  with assemblage exhibited in the 1949 exhibition; a luminous tempera work “Simeone” by founding member Jean Deyrolle;  the Italian geometric painter Silvano Bozzolini’s “Espace”; a seminal abstract work by Oscar Gauthier from 1950; and a major large polished bronze sculpture “Paquier” by Emile Gilioli. Other artists include, Claude Bellegarde, Edgard Pillet, Alfred Reth, Nina Negri, Jean Signovert.