Forms that fly, International Artists in French Collections

Curator: Matthieu Lelièvre

MoCA-Skopje collection artists: 

Pierre Alechinsky (BE/FR), Mogens Andersen (DK/FR), Doroteo Arnáiz ( ES/FR), Anna-Eva Bergman (NO/FR), Lars Bo (DK/FR), Angelica Caporaso (AR), Serge Charchoune (RU/FR), Carlos Cruz-Diez (VE/FR), Hisao Domoto (JP/FR), Curt Fors (SE), Carmen Gracia (AR), Étienne Hajdú (RO/FR), Jeremy Gentilli (UK/FR), Terry Haass (CZ/FR), Hans Hartung (DE/FR), Piotr Kowalski, Barbara Kwasniewska (PL/FR), Wifredo Lam (CU/FR), Greta Leuzinger (CH), Charles Loyd (AUS), Gregory Masurovsky (USA/FR), Roberto Matta (CH/FR), Zoran Mušič (SL/FR), Virgilije Nevjestić (CR), Méret Oppenheim (DE/CH), Mario Prassinos (TR/FR), Enrique Peycere (AR/FR), Sérvulo Esmeraldo (BR/FR), Joan Rabascall (SP/FR), François Stahly (DE/FR), Zora Staack (RS/FR), Anna Staritsky (UA/FR), Kumi Sugai (JP), František Tichý (CZ), Victor Vasarely (HU/FR), Bram van Velde (NK/FR), Marcel-Henri Verdren (BE), Vladimir Veličković (RS), Zao Wou-Ki (CN/FR) and Kenji Yoshida (JP).

macLYON collection artists: 

Jasmina Čibić (SL/UK), Chourouk Hriech (MA/FR), Danielle Vallet-Kleiner (FR) and Ange Leccia (FR).

The history of twentieth-century art, marked by artists’ displacement and exile, reveals a fascinating diversity of trajectories and practices. After the Second World War, many artists were drawn to Paris, a cosmopolitan city and crossroads where numerous international artistic communities took shape. In post-war Europe, Paris became a veritable breeding ground for artists from the four corners of the globe, who were fleeing totalitarian regimes, violent conflicts or authoritarian artistic doctrines. This artistic dynamism gave rise to a number of important movements, including the “Second School of Paris.” 

In the catalogue of the 1966 exhibition of donations,Boris Petkovski, the director of MoCA-Skopje at the time, emphasizes that “this exhibition features works by the most famous French and international artists from the post-war period. The donated works are divided into categories, and the exhibition highlights their connection.” However, when one considers the richness of the French collection, made up of artists with a spectacular diversity of origins, the question arises as to the relevance of a breakdown by nationality.

The exhibition Forms that Fly, International Artists in the French Collections, while including well-established names, takes a particular interest in the work of lesser-known authors – embodied today in the French collection of MoCA-Skopje. As such, the exhibition is a true snapshot of a generation captured with all its doubts and hopes. The creativity to which we are paying tribute today is the fruit of the artistic exchanges of a generation in search of a common language. All languages were mixed together turning Paris into a modern Babel whose common language was art. In this way, the exhibition reconstitutes a “fictitious community” allowing us to blur the lines and imagine artistic encounters in studios, private academies, the Paris School of Fine Arts, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, among others. Above all, this exhibition celebrates these shared pathways and displacements. 

To pay tribute to the artists represented in the Skopje collection, the exhibition also features a selection of works from the collection of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Based on key themes based around the artists’ displacement, travel and the donated works, the selection of works from macLYON likewise encourages an intergenerational and institutional dialogue between the two museums.

The exhibition is realised in collaboration between MoCA-Skopje, macLYON, the French Embassy, the French Institute in Skopje, and the city of Lyon.