André Masson : Il N'y A Pas De Monde Achevé

Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, 29 March - 2 September 2024

André Masson (1896-1987) was one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, committed to and sensitive to the historical and intellectual upheavals of his century. His non-doctrinaire presence among the Surrealists, his invention of automatic drawing and sand paintings, his fruitful collaboration with the artists and thinkers of his time, the influence of his drawings and paintings on the beginnings of American abstract expressionism - all these form the best-known part of a body of work that has yet to be read for the power of its totality.

To mark the centenary of the Manifesto of Surrealism and almost half a century after the retrospective devoted to André Masson at MoMA in New York and then at the Grand Palais, this exhibition catalogue paints a portrait of a protean artist, open to collaborations and to the world, in search of ceaseless experimentation guided by the "dictation of the unconscious" and a desire for infinity.

The book brings together chronologically nearly 150 works - paintings, drawings, sculptures, magazines and unpublished archives - from major public and private collections, set against texts by his friends and commentators, including Kahnweiler, Antonin Artaud, Simone and André Breton, Éluard, Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes and Sartre, revealing all the richness and singularity of the man who called himself the "rebel" of Surrealism.