Simon Hantaï Abandons Painting
The Hungarian-born French painter Simon Hantaï (1922-2008) is well known for the abstract, often very large-scale canvases that he produced between 1960 and 1982 in the medium that he called pliage, or “folding.” These paintings are central to Hantaï’s reputation as one of the earliest and most important artists in Europe to have noticed and responded powerfully to the work of Jackson Pollock. By contrast, little attention has been paid to the painter’s practice in the final twenty-six years of his life, a period in which he refused all but a select few invitations to show his work--even as he shifted his practice onto distinctly altered ground. This talk addresses that lacuna, re-reading both the painter's achievement and its seeming abandonment through the lens of his rarely exhibited and largely unfamiliar late work.
Molly Warnock
Molly Warnock received her BA in History of Art from Ohio State University in 2000.