Curated by Dominique Fourcade, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, and Alfred Pacquement

At the time of his death, Hungarian-born French painter Simon Hantaï (1922–2008) left behind one of the most challenging, diverse, and—as he emphasized—willfully “impure” oeuvres in later twentieth-century art. This comprehensive exhibition, the first full-career survey of the artist’s work, brings together more than 130 paintings made between 1949 and the mid-1990s, from the voracious experimentation of Hantaï’s early years in Paris through the justly renowned abstract canvases he began producing in 1960 in the medium he called pliage, or “folding.” Highlights include the monumental canvases Peinture (Écriture rose) and À Galla Placidia; developed adjacently in the studio between 1958 and 1959, the works are major milestones but have never before been exhibited together. An accompanying catalogue includes essays by Georges Didi-Huberman, Daniel Buren, and the curators, among others.

— Molly Warnock