Simon Hantai was a Hungarian-born French abstract painter best-known for developing his technique of pliage (folding).He attended the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest before moving to France with his wife in 1948. After their arrival, Hantai went to the circle of Hungarians, like him exiled, then came into contact with the Surrealists. In 1953, André Breton was the the first who organized his first solo exhibition in Paris at the Galerie L'Étoile Sealed. After a few years, he emancipated himself from the surrealist aesthetic, broke with Breton and chose other mentors like Georges Mathieu and Jackson Pollock whose work he admired discovered in 1951, during the first exhibition of the American in Paris. He also became friends with Judit Reigl, Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis.
The first volume focusing on the first decade of the artist’s career in France, presenting his works made between 1949-59, from the Surrealist pictures through automatic writings to his subsequent gestural paintings. Way back in the early 1950s, he had tried his hand at what was to become known in art history as the pliage technique, but he only developed this method of creasing and folding his canvases into a full-fledged paintery mode of expression in the very early 1960s, Hantai’s biography, bibliography, and a list of selected articles are included in the first volume.
The second volume contains the works from the following series: Mariales (1960-62), Catamurons (1963-64), Paunches (1964-65), Meuns (1966-68), Studies/Études (1968-69), Watercolors (1970-73), Whites (1973-74), Tabulas (1972-1982) and Leftovers 1981-1998).