Georges Braque - 'Composition with ace of clubs' - 1913

Georges Braque’s principle: ‘the senses deform, but the mind forms.’

- ‘The School of Paris’ by Bernard Dorival, 1962

‘Composition with ace of clubs’- oil, gouache and charcoal on canvas – 81x60cm

Collection: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Joseph Beuys - 'Homogenous infiltration for grand piano' - 1966

“The other face of art (with a deviant function – not comform with the traditional idea of beauty) at the end of this century will have a symbolism that is endlessly exacting in its deep idealism.” – Pierre Restany, ‘L’autre face de l’art’-1979

Joseph Beuys - ‘Homogenous infiltration for grand piano‘, 1966

Materialen: felt cover, a cross of red cloth, tissue - size: 100 x 152 x 240 cm

Collectie: Centre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d'art moderne / Centre de création industrielle

This work is part of the act of ‘Infiltration Homogen für Konzertflügel action, the größte Komponist der Gegenwart ist das Contergankind’ (Homogeneous infiltration for grand piano concert, the greatest contemporary composer is the Contergan child).

This performance by Beuys took place during the Fluxus festival of 1966 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. With this action Beuys wants to draw attention to the pharmaceutical scandal around ‘thalidomide’. This drug caused severe abnormalities for children of mothers who took the drug during pregnancy. The felt cover silences the grand piano. Beuys wants to show the dangers of silence. (source MHKA)

Jean Dubuffet 'Four Trees' - 1972 NY

“My position”, Dubuffet stated, “is that of celebration.”

Group of Four Trees by Jean Dubuffet, commissioned by David Rockefeller in 1969

and placed in front of the Chase Manhattan Building NY

Antoni Tàpies - 'Matter in form of a food' 1965

"They are like metaphysical walls arising, from dust, ashes, earth, destruction, cataclysm, cosmic contemplation and inner meditation." - Art of our century by J.L. Ferrier, 1988 Longman, Essex UK 

‘Matèria en forma de peu’ – size: 132 cm x 162 cm, collection: Fundacioantonitàpies, Barcelona

Tàpies is sometimes associated with an artistic movement known as ‘Informalism’ which was opposed to all intellectual categories (form) and the dualism of western culture (heaven/hell, body/soul). Informe’s views on unnecessary waste inspired Tàpies to paint a calloused foot and other objects normally rejected by capitalist society. He called these works ‘Martéria en forma d’aixela’ (Matter in the shape of an armpit), because all organic life is constantly reshaping itself. His own materials did so as well, evolving naturally into the eponymous ‘wall paintings’ (tapia = wall/Tàpies), with associations of separations, enclosure, and the clandestine graffiti of a persecuted people.

- Helen Oppenheimer (Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture, E. Rodgers)

Man Ray 'Unconcerned Photograph' series - 1959

From a series of 7 photographs (gelatin silver print on paper 42.5 x 30 each), whose ‘blurred images’ Grace Mayer noted, ‘were caused by swinging a Polaroid camera at random around his Paris Studio’.

“There was no humor in it, but what we did was really ‘to upset things’, you know, but subconsciously ‘to clear the way’ as I said before, for something ‘new’ which we didn’t know yet what it might be!” - Man Ray interviewed in 1972 about Dada & Surrealist movements.