Jean Hélion
A survey of the surprising career of French artist Jean Hélion. Deeply committed to abstraction in the thirties, when abstract art became mainstream after World War Two Hélion began to explore other styles.
This retrospective exhibition traces the unusual trajectory of Jean Hélion. In 1930, along with Theo van Doesburg, Otto Carlsund and Léon Tutundjian, he co-founded Art Concret, the avant-garde movement that championed the most radical form of abstract art. When the trend was well established, however, after the Second World War, Hélion turned to figurative painting. As his political ideas collapsed, his domestic scenes would become allegories of modern life, subsequently inspiring new generations of artists such as Jim Dine, representative of American Pop Art, or Gilles Aillaud and Eduardo Arroyo in Europe.
Chronicle of the exhibition
Jean Hélion
This work was published for the large monographic exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris dedicated to the French painter Jean Hélion and which later came to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. An unquestionably key figure among 20th century artistic vanguards, Hélion evolved - surprisingly for many of his contemporaries - from radical abstraction to a return to the essence of the figurative, which has unjustly relegated him to oblivion for a long time.
