Simon Hantaï

Born in Hungary in 1922, Simon Hantaï moved to Paris at the age of 26, and fell in with André Breton’s postwar Surrealist circle, where he was quickly acclaimed by Breton himself. But it was not until the early 1960s that Hantaï developed the “pliage” or “folding method” that has made him an influential figure on both sides of the Atlantic. Hantaï began applying paint to folded canvasses, which--once the canvasses were unfolded and stretched--resulted in irregular patterns of bold color punctuated by strips of unprimed ground. Throughout the rest of his career, Hantaï devoted himself to developing new techniques that slowed down or automated the painterly gesture--a concept that stemmed in part from the early influences of Surrealist automatism, Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism and Matisse’s cut-outs. Hantaï was featured in the Wexner’s seminal As Painting exhibition of 2001, and his work is housed in major collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This elegant and comprehensive volume is published for the Centre Pompidou’s acclaimed Hantaï retrospective, held five years after his death in 2008, and constitutes the first major publication in English on his work.