Claude Viallat, Variations on the Canvas

While the Arte Povera and Land Art movements were spreading in Italy and the United States, Support/Surface was taking root in France, an artistic movement that interpreted the anxieties and concerns of young people in the 1960s and 1970s, who were strongly influenced by Marxist theories. For the new generations of that time, traditional easel painting was a passé expression of bourgeois culture. Claude Viallat was one of the greatest exponents of Support/Surface. He drew textures and colors from the traditional arts of weaving, knotting and dyeing and took up the motifs that are normally found on materials and fabrics. He left the stitching marks in evidence and presented multidimensional perspectives: with Viallat the canvas was no longer a "flat" surface. The 19 works of art on display offer a complete picture of Viallat's research throughout his 30-year career.