Informal art

One gathers under the term of informal art all the abstract and gestural tendencies which appeared with Paris during the time of the post-war period (1945-1960): the Lyric abstraction, the Matiérisme, the New school of Paris, the Tachism.

Pictorial practices

In this painting, each artist leaves any freedom with unforeseen matters (taste for the spot and the accident) and to random of the gesture refusing the drawing and the control as well as the traditional design of painting and his advance which lead idea to finished work, passing by the outlines and the drafts; it is an open work which the spectator can read freely. The pictorial adventure is completely new: instead of starting from a direction to build signs, the artist starts with the manufacture of signs and gives some then the direction, the assistance of the music produced the musical informal art.

Plastic characteristics: spontaneousness of the gesture, expressive use of the matter, no preconceived idea, the experiment of lived gives birth to the idea, work is the place and the privileged moment where the artist is discovered, end of the reproduction of the object for the representation of the subject which becomes the finality of painting, sometimes calligraphic aspect (Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung). Other artists: François Arnal, Jean Degottex, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Henri Michaux, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies, Marie Raymond (mother of Yves Klein)…

Context

With the the United States, with leaving the Second world war, the artistic economic conditions, policies and cause a new manner of painting, of seeing and of giving to see:

the economy is flourishing;
the European artists exiled during the war allowed the American artists to adapt the principles and practices of the avant-garde;
finally with the beginning of the Cold war, American painting represents an exportable cultural weapon.

The abstract Expressionnisme is essential with a new generation of artists living in New York: the movement Action Painting is mainly incarnated by Pollock, De Kooning. The Colorfield Painting (coloured fields) indicates the painting of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

At the same time, in Paris, it appears in many artists that it is not possible any more to represent reality in an explicit way. War, distress, doubt, nonsense, total lack of great projects. Then for which causes to engage?: to engage for its own truth. It is the power of the experimentation. They develop an abstract or “abstract” esthetics to translate their feelings and impressions, their expressivity.

Several names which interfere between them were given to the practice and the regrouping of these artists:

the expression “Lyric abstraction” is employed for the first time by Jean Jose Marchand and Georges Mathieu during the exposure “the imaginary one” organized in 1947;
the term “Tachisme” is employed by the critic Charles Estienne in 1954;
the formula “informal art” was given in 1951 by the art critic Michel Tapié during an exposure on the topic “extreme Tendencies of the nonfigurative Peinture”. This expression thus characterizes the abstract pictorial practices of the post-war period in Europe which makes during with the American expressionnism.

André Malraux supported with interest the informal art, Antonin Artaud also.

See too

abstract Painting

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