The Radical Reinvention of Art in the 1970s
By Artnet Gallery Network
Art history is often defined by pivotal decades, when a generation of artists reinvents its medium in ways that resonate for years to come. At Paris-based gallery Helene Bailly Marcilhac, the summer group show “The Seventies” homes in on the defining evolutions of that decade, which were reflected in a loosening of formal imperatives and a bold embrace of experimentation. Building upon the foundations of earlier 20th-century movements—like Cubism, Surrealism, Lyrical Abstraction, and Art Informel—artists working in the seventies leveraged the creative momentum of earlier decades to herald in a new moment of artistic expression and technique.
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Installation view of “The Seventies,” featuring work by Hans Hartung, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and François-Xavier Lalanne. Photo: Gregory Copitet. Courtesy of Helene Bailly Marcilhac.
Within the realm of painting, highlights from the exhibition include examples by Jean-Paul Riopelle, a critical figure in Canadian art, credited with pioneering French Lyrical Abstraction and ultimately becoming the most internationally acclaimed of the Refus Global signatories, a manifesto that championed Modernism of provincialism. His signature “mosaic” works, which he executed with palette knife rather than brush, challenged the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and signaled a broader generational rejection of convention.
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Elsewhere, paintings by Hans Hartung, a German-French painter best known for his gestural abstractions, and Chinese-French artist Chu Teh-Chun, who bridged Eastern and Western painting traditions to develop a new approach to Modernist abstraction, underscore this penchant for not discarding but rather transforming the achievements of previous generations.
Jean-Paul Riopelle, Sans titre (1966). Photo: Gregory Copitet. Courtesy of Helene Bailly Marcilhac.
Radical experimentation with color is further explored in the show via works by Joan Miró, Sam Francis, and Sonia Delaunay, among others. While not figurative in the traditional sense, the intensity and vibrancy of their palettes conceptually allude to an expressive, psychological presence that in turn point to a decisive evolution in considerations of formal composition.
The curated selection of works are further complemented by late works by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, both of whom hailed from an earlier generation but nevertheless stayed in step with the unrelenting forward march of artistic progress.
Installation view of “The Seventies,” featuring work by Serge Poliakoff, Sam Francis, and Alexander Calder. Photo: Gregory Copitet. Courtesy of Helene Bailly Marcilhac.
What emerges from the survey of the decade at Helene Bailly Marcilhac is that the work made in this period is, intriguingly, of its time and simultaneously timeless. This is in no small part due to the fact that, as the artists from then worked on the artistic legacies bequeathed to them, subsequent generations once again continued to expand on what was achieved—standing on the shoulders of giants. Tracing the visual lexicon of abstraction today, the thread is inextricably tied to that of the 1970s, making “The Seventies” not only a look back into art history, but a touchstone for considerations around the future of artmaking itself.
“The Seventies” is on view at Helene Bailly Marcilhac, Paris, through September 5, 2026.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.