Narrative Figuration 60s-70s

This exhibition – the first of its kind in New York – features the work of nine prominent international artists associated with the Paris-based Narrative Figuration movement: Valerio Adami (b. 1935), Eduardo Arroyo (1937-2018), Erró (b. 1932), Gérard Fromanger (b. 1939), Jacques Monory (1924-2018), Bernard Rancillac (b. 1931), Peter Saul (b. 1934), Hervé Télémaque (b. 1937), and Cybèle Varela (b. 1943).

This groundbreaking figurative style emerged in France in the 1960s in a tense international climate. The events of the Cold War, the Algerian War, and the Vietnam War gave rise to shocking images in the press. Simultaneously, the advertising images of a consumer society continued to multiply, alongside the frenzy and effervescence of artistic activity around the proliferating visual production of the era (cinema, video art, comics, Pop art and New Realism). Like their American counterparts, Narrative Figuration artists placed contemporary society and its imagery at the heart of their work. However, they diverged from them by rejecting a certain “art for the sake of art.”