Trois Tendances de L’Art Français Contemporain

The exhibition brings together works by many renown French artists never represented before in Australia. The introduction to the exhibition catalogue notes: “Two continuing features have characterised French art throughout its illustrious history. The first is the distinction of its style and the high regard in which style itself is held, and the second, perhaps due to the continued influence of the classics, is its subjection to theoretical examination, rigorous logical scrutiny and reference to general principle. These things seem to lie at the root of French eminence in the arts in general which has been maintained for so long and which remains one of the features of the art world even now in a period when national separations are mostly overridden by great swift movements of other kinds.”

Exhibited artists include Sonia Delaunay, Jesus Raphael Soto, Julio le Parc, Marcel Duchamp, and Piere Soulages. In 1990, the NGV acquired a Soulages work shown at this exhibition: Painting, 202 x 143, 6 November 1967.