In the United States and Europe, the 60s and 70s saw a frenetic desire for a clean slate and a passion for refoundation: in 1960, P. Restany invented New Realism, in 1961, H. Flint defined Conceptual Art, and in 1963, N. J. Paik made his first attempts at video art. In 1964, G. Brus invented Body Art, and in 1967 G. Celant published the Arte Povera manifesto. 1969 saw the first Supports/Surfaces exhibition. In 1964 Robert Rauschenberg was awarded the Grand Prize at the 32nd Venice Biennale, making official the disgrace of Abstract Expressionism, embodied among others by J. Pollock*.
Against this backdrop, Archipel, a group of 9 painters founded in 1968 on the initiative of Jean Billecocq, was a singular entity. Provincial and keen to keep its distance from Parisian fashions, the ‘Nantes group of creative culture’, in a sort of inaugural manifesto, immediately set out to emphasise both the independence of each of its members, who shared ‘nothing in common but an incoercible love of freedom’, and also, going against the grain of the trends of the time, ‘a certain idea of painting’, and more specifically abstract painting, which the previous decade had begun to demonetise to a large extent
Galerie le Triphasé is now giving us the chance to (re)discover these painters in an exhibition packed with works of different aesthetic but driven by the same creative energy. The exhibition features works by Jean Billecocq, Jorj Morin, Louis Ferrand, Henry Leray, Laure Martin, Jean-Marc Ehanno, Dominique Chantreau, Arnaud Saint-Loubert-Bié, Maurice Cadou-Rocher, Michel Noury, Bertrand Bracaval, Monique Toupin and Gustave Tiffoche.

Alongside this exhibition, Galerie Gaïa is presenting a selection of works by Jorj Morin, including paintings, engravings, tapestries and mosaics.

Galerie Le Triphasé, 2à Boulevard Gabriel Guist’hau, 44000 Nantes, from 27 February to 12 April 2025

Galerie Gaïa, 4 rue Fénelon, 44000 Nantes, from 25 February to 15 March 2025.

*See the article Jackson Pollock, freedom and the CIA .