Supports/Surfaces

Supports/Surfaces was an art movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s which came out of the south of France. It has significantly impacted contemporary art. The group combined a material examination of the formal elements of painting with a rigorous political and philosophical stance. The group radically re-imagined the place of art in society and formally deconstructed and examined the material components of painting. For these artists, the canvas and stretcher bars (which are traditionally meant to disappear in a work of art) take center stage, expanding and complicating our understanding of the space of painting. Their unique and colorful take on installation was on display at the 2019 retrospective of the group's work at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Their work has been shown all throughout Europe including the Musée d'Art Moderne, and individual artists from the group like Claude Viallat and Toni Grand went on to represent France at the Venice Biennale and have had work placed in the permanent collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Supports/Surfaces”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Supports/Surfaces is art movement, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶