Around 80 rarely-shown artworks retrace a polyphonic, subjective history of non-fi guration in dialogue with the late 19th-century avant-garde movements that form the core of MuMa’s permanent display.


Setting out from the disappearance of the subject, the exhibition invites us to refl ect on some of the forms taken by abstract art - still lifes featuring diluted shapes (in the works of André Masson, Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes), erasure of the landscape (Nicolas de Staël, Olivier Debré and Geneviève Asse), purely visual or geometric language (Jean Hélion, Maurice Estève and Léon Gischia), emphasis on gesture and a feeling for Informalism (Zao Wou-ki, Camille Bryen, Albert Féraud and Julius Baltazar), focus on materials (Ladislas Kijno, Théo Kerg and Marc Devade), and so on. MuMa takes us on a sentient voyage, a journey through artistic universes, sensations and colours that offer themselves to us as an alternative explanation of the world, a window onto different perceptions.


Visuel de l'affiche : détail de "Tensions", Jean HÉLION, 1932, huile sur toile, 72,8 x 60 cm. Le Havre, musée d’art moderne André Malraux ©MuMa Le Havre / Florian Kleinefenn ©Adagp, Paris 2023