Nouveau réalisme

The artist Christo showed with the group. It was dissolved in 1970. • Illustration — Nouveau Réalisme Manifesto signed by all original members in Yves Klein's apartment at 14, rue Campagne-Première on October 27th, 1960 • Illustration — Travailleurs Communistes by Raymond Hains Contemporary with American pop art, and often conceived as its transposition in France, new realism was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of the numerous tendencies of the avant-garde in the 1960s. The group initially chose Nice, on the French Riviera, as its home base since Klein and Arman both originated there; new realism is thus often retrospectively considered by historians to be an early representative of the École de Nice movement.

The painter Jean Milhau coined the term “new realism” in the journal Arts de France, which was close to the French Communist Party, and defined this young movement in 1948: “A current is emerging which, without denying the achievements of modern culture and technology, denies the primacy of formal research, advocates a return to objective reality and to the subject, and emphasizes the social content of all reality". André Fougeron really launched the movement with Les Parisiennes au Marché, exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1948. Painters like Boris Taslitzky, Jean Milhau, Jean Vénitien and Mireille Miailhe were also at its origin in France while Renato Guttuso, the "Italian Fougeron", was considered to be "at the origin of the new Italian realism", with his works on Sicilian peasants such as The Occupation of Waste Land in Sicily (1949) and Gabriele Mucchi with his painting La Terre representing a barefoot peasant holding earth in his hands, also reproduced in the magazine Arts de France as a painting representing the movement. The new realism movement of the 50s eventually fell out of favour with the PCF and most artists associated with it soon changed their styles accordingly.

The term new realism was again used in May 1960 by Pierre Restany, to describe the works of Omiros, Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé as they exhibited their work in Milan. He had discussed this term before with Yves Klein (who died prematurely in 1962), who preferred the expression "today's realism" (réalisme d'aujourd'hui) and criticized the term "New". After the first "Manifesto of New Realism", a second manifesto, titled "40° above Dada" (40° au-dessus de Dada) was written between 17 May and 10 June 1961. César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint-Phalle (then practicing "shooting paintings") Omiros with his "free space" and Gérard Deschamps then joined the movement, followed by Christo in 1963. Klein, however, started to distance himself from the group around 1961, disliking Restany's insistence on a Dadaist heritage. The first exposition of the nouveaux réalistes took place in November 1960 at the Paris "Festival d'avant-garde". This exposition was followed by others: in May 1961 at the Gallery J. in Paris; Premier Festival du Nouveau Réalisme in Nice from July til September 1961 at the Muratore Gallery and the Abbaye de Roseland; International Exhibition of the New Realists, a survey of contemporary American pop art and the Nouveau Réalisme movement at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York at the end of 1962; and at the Biennale of San Marino in 1963 (which would be the last collective show by the group). The movement had difficulty maintaining a cohesive program after the death of Yves Klein in June, 1962 and when Omiros abandoned it and decided to go in his own path experimenting with perspective and space.

"The new realists" is also a term applied to a group of Australian architects determined to create a "New Realism" in architecture, based on the understanding of past developments in the discipline of architecture and modern day explorations of new technologies in the fields of design and building technology.

• Illustration — Arman, Foto: Lothar Wolleh • Illustration — Villeglé, Foto: Lothar Wolleh • Illustration — Niki de Saint Phalle, Foto:Lothar Wolleh • Illustration — Jean Tinguely, Foto Lothar Wolleh