Simon Hantaï resided in his Hungarian homeland, becoming a student at the Budapest School of Fine Arts until 1948, when he received a government grant to study in Paris, France. Arriving in France after a stint in Italy the following year, he entered a period of experimentation, that led to a certain understanding of Sienese and Florentine painting, as well as lessons of a more abstract nature. The influence of surrealism came at just the right time, helping him to both unleash his vivid artistic imagination and make the most of an expanded interpretation of collage. Hantaï combined painting with animal bones and a variety of other materials that created disconcerting relief in his works, more effectively expressing his dark, tormented iconography. This surrealist phase led to an exhibition in 1953, the catalogue of which was prefaced by André Breton, but the phase came to an end in 1955 with the publication of a text co-signed with French writer Jean Schuster, “Une démolition au platane” (“A Plantaneous Demolition,” a title involving a pun on French words for “plane tree” and “Plato”), through which the painter settled a score he had with his mentor’s dogmatism.

For Hantaï’s discovery of Jackson Pollock’s work, brilliantly demonstrating the vitality of abstraction, led him to an understanding of pictorial expression outside any iconographic dictates. Scraping, an exercise in subtraction, was symptomatic of this reconquering of an unprecedented space, first under the auspices of the sexual and linguistic delusions of pataphysics French writer Jean-Pierre Brisset, then inspired by mystical and liturgical writings. His short-lived collaboration with Georges Mathieu in homage to the mystic medieval philosopher Siger of Brabant in 1957, but above all the écritures the following year, are the products of a crucial contemplation of signs as a surviving trace on the palimpsest of memory. His pliage comme méthode (“folding as method”) comes directly from this experience of the burial and emergence of signs and shapes on the canvas surface. Following various protocols for folding and crumpling the canvas – allowing him, to a degree, to avoid happenstance –, Hantaï covered the remaining portions of the surface with paint in such a way that, when the canvas was unfolded, the result was both painted and unpainted areas. The self-generated painting became the miming of the incarnation of the Son of God: the first folds, grouped under the title “Le Mur,” known as Manteaux de la Vierge, underscore this theological dimension. In 1967, he gave the generic title of Peintures mariales [Cloaks] to the four series of the decade: in addition to the one already mentioned, “La Porte”, called the Catamurons (1963-1964), Maman! Maman!, known as La Saucisse (1964-1965), and the Meuns (1967-1968), named after a small village in the forest of Fontainebleau, France..

From 1968 to 1976, Hantaï varied the protocols of pliage (folding) in the Études [Studies], the Blancs [Whites] and the Tabulas, and up until his installation in Paris in 1979. A second series of Tabulas (1980-1982) was followed by his “retirement” (which did not mean that he stopped painting, as evidenced by his Sans titre in 1984), that nevertheless included the Laissées [Leftovers] exhibition in 1998, and by digital prints under the title Suaire [Shroud] in 2001, testifying to his continued contemplation of the destiny of painting.

This exclusive exhibition, specifically conceived for the Espace Louis Vuitton Osaka as part of the “Hors-les-murs” programme, follows Simon Hantaï. The Centenary Exhibition and the display of a large Tabula in Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World exhibition, both presented at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, respectively in 2022 and 2019. It browses a vast series of works, all belonging to the Collection, created between the early 1960s and the 1980s, when Hantaï voluntarily withdrew from the public eye.

About the Fondation Louis Vuitton
The Fondation Louis Vuitton serves the public interest and is exclusively dedicated to contemporary art and artists, as well as 20th-century works to which their inspirations can be traced. The Collection and the exhibitions it organizes seek to engage a broad public. The magnificent building created by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and already recognized as an emblematic example of the 21st-century architecture, constitutes the Fondation’s seminal artistic statement. Since its opening in October 2014, the Fondation has welcomed more than nine million visitors from France and around the world.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton commits to engage in international initiatives, both at the Fondation and in partnership with public and private institutions, including other foundations and museums such as the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection in 2016 and The Morozov Collection in 2021), the MoMA in New York (Being Modern: MoMA in Paris), and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (The Courtauld Collection. A Vision for Impressionism) among others. The artistic direction also developed a specific “Hors-les-murs” programme taking place within the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka, which are exclusively devoted to exhibitions of works from the Collection. These exhibitions are open to the public free of charge and promoted through specific cultural communication.