Exhibitions
Gesture and matter: when art learned to speak from the wound
From May 13 to September 7, 2026, El Cubo's exhibition space will host "Gesture and Matter ," an essential exhibition for understanding how contemporary art re-emerged after the trauma of World War II. More than just an exhibition, the show is an immersion into a turbulent era in which artists abandoned traditional representation to transform painting into a physical, emotional, and radically free territory.
The exhibition transports us to postwar Paris, when the French capital momentarily reclaimed its role as the cultural epicenter of the Western world. However, this time it had to share the spotlight with New York, an emerging city where abstract expressionism was redefining the rules of artistic creation. Between these two sides of the Atlantic, an intense dialogue was born that would forever change the history of art.
Far removed from academic landscapes or recognizable figures, the artists of this generation sought new forms of expression capable of conveying anguish, memory, violence, silence, and hope. Gesture, matter, texture, and chance became absolute protagonists. Painting ceased to be merely representation and became a physical, almost performative act.
Jean Degottex, Aware I, January 3, 1961. Dation in payment, 1992. Collection Center Pompidou, Paris © The Estate of Jean Degottex / ADAGP, Paris 2026 © Center Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn.
One of the exhibition's main themes is Transatlantic Exchanges , a section dedicated to the connections between Europe and the United States. Here, the decisive influence of Jackson Pollock is evident, whose revolutionary dripping technique—the dripping of paint onto the canvas—opened a new dimension in contemporary abstraction. His legacy engages with the explorations of numerous European artists who found in spontaneity and gesture a new way of understanding painting.
Particularly striking is the section "Black Is a Color ," one of the most intense and understated in the exhibition. Works by Pierre Soulages and Antonio Saura reveal how black and white can contain an extraordinary emotional and expressive power. In their hands, darkness ceases to be absence and becomes living matter, capable of conveying the full emotional density of a continent marked by war and reconstruction.
The exhibition also explores the dialogue between Asian and Western cultures, analyzing the profound influence of Eastern calligraphy on numerous European and American artists. The synthesis between the Asian landscape tradition and the gestural freedom of abstract expressionism gave rise to some of the most poetic and spiritual works of the period.
Simon Hantaï, Peinture [Painting], 1957. Gift of M. Daniel Cordier, 1989. Collection Center Pompidou, Paris © Archives Simon Hantaï / VEGAP 2026 © Center Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn.
The tour is completed with "Another Art" and European Diffusion , sections that allow us to understand how this new abstraction spread throughout the continent thanks to the impetus of galleries, critics and artists exiled or displaced by the authoritarian regimes of the time.
The list of artists featured in *Gesture and Matter* demonstrates the international scope of the movement. Among the artists represented are Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Hans Hartung, Manolo Millares, Kazuo Shiraga, Zao Wou-Ki, and Mark Tobey, among many other key figures in international Informalism and Abstract Expressionism.
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