4 museomag 01 ‘ 2021
A NEW VITALITY IN THE FORM‘S
ENDLESS FLEXIBILITY
TWO FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE SUPPORTS/SURFACES MOVEMENT,
VIALLAT AND SAYTOUR, QUESTIONING PAINTING ITSELF
Saytours monumental Pliage (1969) came to the museum with the generous sup port of the Amis des Musées last year.
©
éric
chenal
One of the undeniable strengths of the MNHA’s col-
lection of international art is the ensemble of paintings
by an artistic movement from 1966-1972 which helped
laying the foundation for contemporary French art,
both in painting and sculpture: Supports/Surfaces. In
fact, the museum, with the Centre Pompidou in Paris,
houses one of the most important public collections
worldwide of artists belonging to - or associated with
Supports/Surfaces. This collection, which has been
carefully built up over many years, is still actively
strengthened with donations and purchases. From 21
December 2020 to 29 August 2021 important acqui-
sitions from recent years are shown in the context of
our rich museum holdings in this field. The presenta-
tion focuses on works by two founding members of the
Supports/Surfaces movement: Patrick Saytour (b.1935)
and Claude Viallat (b.1936). Of the eleven works on dis-
play by these two giants of French modern painting,
no less than five were acquired by the MNHA in 2019
and 2020. Saytours monumental Pliage (1969), which
came to the museum with the generous support of the
Amis des Musées, is among the works that can now be
shared with our visitors for the first time.
As for beginnings: Supports/Surfaces had its birth-
place in the south of France, where most of the group’s
earliest members lived and worked, in cities like Mont-
pellier, Nîmes and Nice (the latter two cities are in fact
the birthplaces of Viallat and Saytour, respectively).
There they were part of a group of twelve artists, no-
tably with Vincent Bioulès, Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze,
Jean-Pierre Pincemin and Bernard Pagès, along with
several others who were closely affiliated. From the
start, their work was marked by an interest in materia-
lity, a lyrical use of color and expansive ideas of what
constitutes a painting.
DEMISTIFYING THE FORM
The group’s name refers to their attempt to strip pain-
ting down to its most essential components. Surface
alludes to the canvas of a painting, while support re-
fers to the stretcher bars that gives a painting structural
integrity. By exposing the conventions and processes
of painting, they hoped to demystify the form while
proposing new possibilities to explore. The artists of
the group also questioned the art market, as well as
certain rules about dating and signing works. They had
a heartfelt desire to return to a sort of reductive and
essential art practice. Claude Viallat summarized it as
follows: «Dezeuze painted frames without canvas, I
painted canvas without frames and Saytour the image
