Organised by the Monnaie de Paris and the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition marks Mathieu’s return to the salons of the Quai de Conti, over fifty years after the landmark 1971 show Mathieu at the Monnaie: Medals and Paintings. It traces the artist’s trajectory from the mid-1940s—when he contributed to the emergence of an international abstract expressionism—to his late works of the 1990s. Structured both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition places key paintings in dialogue with works from the Musée national d’art moderne, including La Victoire de Denain (1963), presented here for the first time since its acquisition by the national collections.

Long criticised for his taste for spectacle and “showmanship,” Georges Mathieu—elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1975—is today recognised as a singularly powerful artist whose critical reception continues to grow.     

The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art enriches this retrospective with two major early loans: Évanescence (1945) and Phosphène (1948). These seminal works, akin to those developed by Wols during the same period, alternate between abstract linework and organic forms, rendered through drips, stains, and projections.