At the end of the 1960s, a new medium revolutionized Loïs Frederick’s painting: acrylic. It allowed her to enrich her palette even more. The colours are bright, dazzling, and fluorescent. Colour invaded everything and Loïs Frederick joined her American compatriots of the Colour Field and All Over movements. The painting no longer had any meaning, no borders, and no centre. All the techniques, finishes, all the materials, all the colours work for the light. This what Loïs Frederick sought ultimately: to recreate the effects of light. Like late Monet and like the Abstract Expressionists, Loïs Frederick plunges us into a poetic universe that is mysterious and meditative, built up on transparencies.

Like many other modern painters, Bernard Buffet, fascinated by the colors and light of the South of France, settled in his house of La Baume, in Tourtour, Haut-Var. He painted many views of his house, which he loved dearly. La Baume thus became one of the symbols of the painter’s body of works.

Gérard Schneider’s reflexes in painting already emerge from this powerful painting: colour worked in depth by superimposed layers and glazes, broad and powerful brushstrokes and nervous layers that give dynamism to the overall composition. Schneider has here mastered all the elements of his language that will allow him shortly afterwards to free all the power of his “dramatic abstraction”.

During the 1960s, Rougemont started to work with the ellipse shape; the ellipse thus became the first geometrical shape to obsess the artist. Rougemont experimented with this elongated circle using vinyl paint on the flat surface of the canvas. The ellipse is also the shape Rougemont used to create his first pieces of furniture, such as his iconic Cloud Table.

“It’s in the practice of the visual arts that I found the intellectual vitality for my urban planning and architecture” said Le Corbusier. This artwork shows two figures in front of a white door that opens into a black space. The architecture is therefore present in this work and contributes an effect of perspective. The bright colours which were typical of the previous period of “Objects of poetic reaction” are also present. Here he has experimented with drawing outlines in a single gesture inspired by Matisse. This process was later called the “marriage of contours”. Le Corbusier then drew in a single line the outline of two objects or two female figures.

This artwork from 1963 is part of the ensemble of Terres (Earths) painted by Roberto Matta in Italy. The rough material is mixed with glues and applied to hessian. The use of these modest materials is doubtless influenced by Arte Povera artists. Matta realized that it “was possible to paint the process of change”. His search for a form that was constantly evolving comes from this revelation. This idea is applied to earth, a poor and rough material, it is transformed into pigment and reaches the status of a work of art.

“Painting is not a speculation of the mind or spirit, it’s a gesture from within” said Jean Miotte. His work is personal, unclassifiable, between Abstract Expressionism, Informal Art, Tachism … His paintings were created with an immediate gesture, a searing intensity. “Movement is my life” said Jean Miotte and for this, he was compared with Jackson Pollock.

After the second world war, Marie Raymond permanently chose abstraction. This artwork is a perfect example of her geometric abstraction from the late 1940s. Originally from the south of France, Marie Raymond likes to use warm colours in her works. Here, four yellow and orange shapes are distributed on a red background. A few light blue lines bring contrast. This organized composition makes us recall that Marie Raymond shared her Parisian studio with the painter Piet Mondrian.