Initiated in Paris in the early 1960s, Narrative Figuration appeared in reaction to the different currents of abstraction that dominated the artistic scene at the time. Fuelled with political, social, economic, and cultural news, it shares solid aesthetic ties with Anglo-Saxon pop art, a movement many still frequently blend. The six thematical sections of the exhibition "Narrative Figuration: Another Pop Language" aim to show how artists of this movement used images of mass culture to forge a pictural language based on the representation of daily life and fuelled with references to comics, photography, movies and advertising, lying at the heart of this emerging pop culture.

The artists, mostly French and European, offer a critical and ironic vision of these two decades, shaped by the tumults of the Cold War and the rise of a consumption society following the Trente Glorieuses (the « Glorious Thirty » post-war boom period) . With their attuned understanding of this often-idealised period, they managed to inject into their works an authentic reflection on the production and distribution of images in the mass media and their impact on contemporary society.

The Musée d’art de Pully and the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève, jointly organise this exhibition. A catalogue will be published alongside, including all exhibited artworks.

Press release