Figuration Libre Revisited at Fondation Coffim

The Fondation Coffim in Paris hosted "Il était une fois… la figuration libre" from November 28, 2001 to February 28, 2002, curated by Philippe Piguet. The exhibition focused on the core artists of the French figuration libre movement: Rémi Blanchard, François Boisrond, Robert Combas, Hervé Di Rosa, and Richard Di Rosa. It featured early works and archival documents, many photographed by Georges Rousse. The movement emerged in the late 1970s in Sète, where Combas and Hervé Di Rosa met, later joined by Boisrond, Blanchard, and Richard Di Rosa. Key exhibitions included "Après le classicisme" (1980, Musée d'art et d'industrie de Saint-Étienne), "A New Spirit in Painting" (1981, Royal Academy of Arts, London), and "Finir en beauté" (1981, organized by Bernard Lamarche-Vadel). Ben coined the term "figuration libre" in 1981. The movement is compared to German neo-expressionism, Italian transavanguardia, New York graffiti artists (Haring, Scharff), and California underground culture (Peter Saul, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, H.C. Westermann). The article notes that figuration libre remains the only real success of contemporary art with the French public and questions why no major museum has held a retrospective.