PARIS.- The French painter Georges Mathieu (1921-2012) occupies a singular place in the history of twentieth-century art. As the inventor of lyrical abstraction, he is known for his fast-paced, gestural painting that is charged with spirituality. Despite undisputed recognition in Europe, Mathieu's work remains relatively unknown in the United States, where American abstract expressionism dominated the post-war art scene. Yet a careful analysis of his career shows that Georges Mathieu exerted a significant influence internationally, particularly through his links with the American art world.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Georges Mathieu established himself in Paris as one of the leading theorists and practitioners of lyrical abstraction, a reaction against the coldness of geometric abstraction and the intellectualism of Cubism. He valued gesture, speed of execution, intuition and transcendence. His public pictorial performances, particularly from 1956 onwards, anticipated action art and helped to blur the boundaries between painting and performance.

From 1952, Mathieu exhibited at the Stable Gallery in New York. There, he presented his paintings in a domestic and intellectual setting, posing as a thinker rather than a simple painter. This approach disconcerted the American critics, who valued a more raw, less "decorative" style of painting. In 1954, James Thrall Soby published an article in The Saturday Review asking "Is Jackson Pollock as talented as Georges Mathieu? At the same time, MoMA and the Guggenheim acquired several of Mathieu's paintings.

Mathieu's reception across the Atlantic became more confrontational from 1955 onwards, with the publication of the article Mathieu Paints a Picture in ARTnews. The theatrical and performative dimension of Mathieu's art shocked artists like Clyfford Still, who saw it as a caricature of abstract expressionism. In the context of the Cold War, an artistic nationalism was emerging: American artists were claiming Abstract Expressionism as a typically American cultural product. Mathieu, for his part, reaffirmed his attachment to a French vision of art, while claiming to be cosmopolitan.

Mathieu is also active in Japan, where he influences the Gutai scene, and is pursuing a flourishing career in Europe. His spectacular performances (such as La Bataille de Bouvines), his taste for monumental formats and his historical approach make him a unique artist. Although criticised by some American critics, he contributed to the emergence of an international concept of gestural painting.

Georges Mathieu embodies a European side of gestural abstraction, different from but parallel to American abstract expressionism. His decorative aesthetic, his attachment to French tradition and his practice of performance art left their mark on post-war aesthetic debates. His international influence, though partially obscured by the dominant centric narrative of American art, deserves to be revalued today as an essential contribution to the globalisation of modern art.

Exhibition curators:

Christian Briend, Conservateur général du Patrimoine, Head of the Modern Collections Department at the Centre Pompidou.

Éric de Chassey, Director of the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA) in Paris and professor of modern and contemporary art history at the École normale supérieure in Lyon.

Béatrice Coullaré, Head of collections and conservation at the Musée de la Monnaie de Paris.