A Story Of Art: Yvon Lambert, A Collection, A Donation, A Venue

From the 1960s onwards, gallery owner and collector Yvon Lambert (1936-) was a pioneer in France, championing minimal and conceptual art, then, in the 1980s, the new figurative and expressive painting, and finally photography, the moving image and installation art. The donation he made to the French state in 2012 stands out for its incredible wealth, with groups of works by artists who are often little represented in French public collections: 35 works by Nan Goldin, 16 by Cy Twombly, 14 by Sol LeWitt, 7 by Robert Ryman, 6 by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 6 by Miquel Barceló, and so on.

This book paints a portrait of the art of the last sixty years through the tastes and passions of Yvon Lambert. It presents more than 250 of the nearly 600 works in the Yvon Lambert Donation, acquired either on the occasion of exhibitions organised in Yvon Lambert's various spaces between Paris and New York, or directly from the artists at the very moment of their creation.

Produced by art historians and critics, this volume anchors the donation in the major artistic movements of the last sixty years, and links it to the aesthetic and social upheavals that have shaped the history of contemporary art.