Seven American artists share their invaluable perspectives on the decisive work of Simon Hantaï.
Molly Warnock invites seven American artists to write on the work of Simon Hantaï. A major artist of the second half of the 20th century, Hantaï developed an immense and multifaceted work, passing from Surrealism to gestural and written paintings and, finally, the invention of the folding method. Julie Ault, Sarah Crowner, Odili Donald Odita, Eileen Quinlan, David Reed, Pieter Schoolwerth and James Siena share their views on this master of abstraction.
Molly Warnock is an art critic and art historian based in Baltimore. The author of Simon Hantaï and the Reserves of Painting (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020) and Penser la Peinture: Simon Hantaï (Gallimard, 2012), she has written widely on modern and contemporary art for, among other journals, Artforum, Art in America, Les Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Tate Papers, nonsite.org, and Journal of Contemporary Painting, as well as for numerous European and U.S. exhibition catalogues. In 2010, she curated a double exhibition of Simon Hantaï's work for the Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, and wrote the accompanying catalogue.
Simon Hantaï (1922-2008) was a painter born in Hungary. He moved to France in 1948. He is considered as a major figure of the abstract painting. He produced a complex and multiple work marked starting 1960 by the use of "folding as a method".
