Figuration or abstraction? The painter Jean Hélion afforded himself the luxury of not choosing by pursuing a dual career punctuated by success, scandals and a good number of misunderstandings by his peers. Unlike his contemporaries, this faithful friend of Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp and Hans Hartung moves backwards. A pioneer of abstraction across the Atlantic, the artist changed direction at the dawn of the Second World War and began a slow journey towards figuration.

Is fashion for abstract genius? Hélion now revisits the canonical genres of painting, starting with the nude, still life and allegory. His works gain in volume, in perspective, the irruption of reality rears its ugly head while human silhouettes soon appear on the canvas. A real puzzle of which only Hélion holds the secret... The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris retraces this anachronistic life in painting around a selection of one hundred and fifty masterpieces rarely shown at the audience. Rich in one hundred and three paintings and fifty drawings, this retrospective sheds light on the little-known work of an experimental artist indifferent to criticism who single-handedly sums up the entire 20th century.

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