Paris - 1952
When the legendary Cubist art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler assumed Caziel's abstract work to be an experiment from which he would return to figuration, Caziel insisted 'Non, je suis abstrait'.
Kahnweiler's wish to include Caziel in his stable of figurative artists headed by Picasso, occured at a time when Caziel had turned to Abstraction, ensued by the exciting developments of the movement following the end of the Second World War.
This exhibition reveals Caziel's early abstract work. 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.
A highly personal expression of his epicurist 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.
