Caziel: Abstraction Explored

This exhibition brings together some of the most important and inspiring works from Caziel's early abstract period, from a time when he was at the centre of the Post-War Parisian art scene. It includes his first abstract paintings, which combine a Cubist-influenced aesthetic and geometric decomposition, alongside his mature abstract style in which lyricism and geometrical abstraction merge. With these works Caziel believed that, as possibly Picasso and Braque did when they invented Cubism, he was reaching for a higher order of reality, a new perspective, which hinted at the spiritual. In search of a new dimension, his art transcends the natural stimulus of figuration, bringing to life an unseen world punctuated by nuances in colour, texture and form, yet always humanistic in intention.

A highly personal expression of his epicurean belief that painting should bring joy, Caziel's work of the 1950s figures within the upbeat current which defined Paris' cultural identity in the aftermath of the Second World War. These works represent the start of Caziel's journey into abstraction, a route which he would follow with inexhaustible passion for the rest of his life.