Hélion

Paperback reprint

After taking part in the creation of the Art Concret group and magazine, and then Abstraction-Création, Jean Hélion (1904-1987) returned to figurative art. From the end of 1942, a few figurative elements appeared, leading, ten years later, to the most disconcerting phase of his work. Thus were born the "mannequineries", the "journalerie", etc. and then, at the end of his life, the "suites pucières". The hat, umbrella, glove and pumpkin symbolise the painter's work.

Abundantly illustrated, this reprint of the monograph published in 1992 allows us to judge the complex but inflexible logic that led to the development of the work of Hélion, "a distant pupil of Poussin and Champaigne, formed by his passion for Seurat and Cézanne, [who] regenerated, in the post-war context, the formalist aesthetic and the hedonistic idea of the French tradition".