This is the catalogue of the first Italian retrospective dedicated to the legendary abstract painter, Simon Hantaï. The exhibition was organized by the Academy of France in Rome, Villa Medici and curated by the director Éric de Chassey. Simon Hantaï contradicted the negation of painting, instead liberating the support from a passive role to an active one, helping to push art forward by means of new processes in order to rethink the act of painting.

In 1960, inspired by Jackson Pollock and Henri Matisse, Hantaï initiated his ‘pliage’ or folded canvas method of working, an entirely new painting technique that dominated his entire career and creative output. Included in this catalogue are several of Hantaï ’s most celebrated works. Among them is the Mariale that is conserved in the Vatican Museums, the series of Mariales made by Hantaï between 1960 and 1962 and the series Pliages à usage domestique, that includes many never-before-seen pieces.

Six years after this renowned artist’s death, this Italian exhibition commemorates him in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which dedicated to him a major exhibition curated by Dominique Fourcade, Isabelle Monod Fontaine and Alfred Pacquement. Besides Centre Pompidou, the works of Simon Hantaï are also conserved at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.