Simon Hantaï

Simon Hantaï (7 December 1922, Bia, Hungary – Paris, 12 September 2008; took French nationality in 1966) is a painter generally associated with abstract art.
After studying at the Budapest School of Fine Art, he travelled through Italy on foot and moved to France in 1948. André Breton wrote the preface to his first exhibition catalogue in Paris, but in 1955 Hantaï broke with the surrealist group over Breton's refusal to accept any similarity between the surrealist technique of automatic writing and Jackson Pollock's methods of action painting.
A retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Pompidou in 1976, and in 1982 he represented France at the Venice Biennale.
A representative collection of Hantaï's works is held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
A Simon Hantaï Restrospective opened at the Centre Pompidou on May 22, 2013 with more than 130 works from 1949 to 1990s, and a full color illustrated catalog.

In 1960, Hantaï developed his technique of "pliage" (folding): the canvas is folded and scrunched, then doused with colour, and unfolded, leaving apparent blank sections of the canvas interrupted by vibrant splashes of colour. He stated: "The pliage developed out of nothing. It was necessary to simply put myself in the place of someone who had seen nothing... in the place of the canvas. You could fill the folded canvas without knowing where the edge was. You don't know where things stop. You could even go further, and paint with your eyes closed." ("Le pliage ne procédait de rien. Il fallait simplement se mettre dans l'état de ceux qui n'ont encore rien vu; se mettre dans la toile. On pouvait remplir la toile pliée sans savoir où était le bord. On ne sait plus alors où cela s'arrête. On pouvait même aller plus loin et peindre les yeux fermés.")
Hantai first started working on his folding method from 1960 to 1962 with the cloaks, a reference to the idiom of landscape. From 1967 to 1968 he worked on the Meuns series where he studies the theme of the figure. Meun is the name of a small village in the Fontainbleau Forest where the artist lived starting 1966. Hantai stated: "It was while working on the Studies that I realized what my true subject was - the resurgence of the ground underneath my painting." In contrast with the Meun, the figure, in the Studies, is absorbed and the white detaches from being the background and becomes dynamic.Wikipedia

Surrealism Alice Rahon

Alice Phillipot (later Paalen and Rahon) (8 June 1904 – September 1987) was a French/Mexican poet and artist, whose work contributed to the beginning of abstract expression in Mexico. She began as a surrealist poet in Europe, but began painting in Mexico. She was a prolific artist from the late 1940s to the 1960s, exhibiting frequently in Mexico and the United States, with a wide circle of friends in these two countries. Her work remained tied to surrealism, but was also innovative including abstract elements and the use of new techniques such as sgraffito and the use of sand for texture. She became isolated in her later life due to health issues, and except for retrospectives at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1986 and at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 2009 and 2014, has been largely forgotten despite her influence on Mexican modern art.

Rahon's early artistic work was in poetry, often writing about scenes and landscapes from her childhood, as well as about her immobility and nostalgia.
However, after arriving in Mexico, she began to paint, firstly in satercolours, inspired by the colour she encountered in Mexico.Most of her later work was in oils, but she also created drawings, collages and objects.[The main influences in her work are surrealism, poetry, her travels and Mexico.Her work has been described as primitive and intensely poetic, “breathing with and inner life.”Her paintings have some link to surrealism but are also tied to her experiences in Mexico and her use of colour, light and the appearance of landscapes show influence from poetry.Influence from cave paintings and tribal art from her travels can also be seen. Her works were considered mature from the beginning, with abstract elements (not accepted in Mexico at the time) but still representing something concrete, almost always natural phenomena. Her surrealist influence was mostly from Paalen, with important early influences being Moraines, Rendez-vod de vivieres and Cristales del espacio However, she is also classed with other surrealist artists from Europe in Mexico, such as Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington .Unlike these two, she did not confine herself to oils but experimented with techniques, especially those related to texture, showing influence from Rufino Tamayo.

 Her themes include landscapes, elements from myths, legends, Mexican festivals, and elements of nature, along with mythical cities (which represent introspective worlds) and homage to various artists that she admired. Water appeared often, both in form and as the color blue. She made series of paintings related to rivers, similar to those created by Paul Klee titled El Nilo, Rio Papaloapan, Rio Papagayos and Encuentro de Rivieras (painted many years later). She created paintings to honor Giorgio de Chirico, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Joan Miró and Pablo Neruda . Two dedicated to Frida Kahlo include La balada de Frida Kahlo (made shortly after Frida's death), as well as Frida aux yeux d’hirondelle in 1956, which was reworked a decade later.
While surrealist, her work also demonstrates the beginning of abstract art in Mexico in the 1940s, along with Carlos Mérida, Gunther Gerzso and Wolfgang Paalen.She was also a pioneer in the use of sand, sgraffito and other textures on her canvases.Wikipedia