Painter, collagist, printmaker, filmmaker, and calligrapher Pierre Alechinsky has long been identified with Cobra, the collection of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam artists linked (via Guy Debord) to the wider ethos of French intellectuals in the ’50s and ’60s. But who is Alechinsky beyond Cobra? With this retrospective of more than 100 works from 1948–97, Jeu de Paume director Daniel Abadie intends to find out. Expect a fuller picture to emerge of an artist whose interest in melding painterly surfaces, graphics, political action, and performance makes him an interesting precursor—more kindly uncle than forbidding forefather—to a whole generation of younger polymaths.

— Frances Richard