"In Mathieu's hand the gesture precedes the sign, and Paris becomes pure speed and colour."
Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1921, Georges Mathieu (1921–2012) settled in Paris in 1947 and became one of the pioneers of Lyrical Abstraction, championing a painting of pure speed, instinct and gesture over premeditated form. Rejecting figuration entirely, he developed a technique of rapid, explosive gesture, often performed in public, squeezing paint directly from the tube or hurling it across monumental canvases. In 1965 he crowned this obsession with the capital in Paris, Capitale des Arts, an immense canvas conceived as a tribute to the city that had made him. For Mathieu, Paris was never a subject to depict but an energy to unleash: the city becomes pure rhythm, colour and velocity, a lyrical abstraction of its own restless spirit.