Nuagisme

also: Cloudism

movement 1955-1973 France Europe

Nuagisme (Cloudism) is the name the French critic Julien Alvard gave in the 1950s to a current of young painters in France whose work sought transparency, depth, and openness to natural forces - the antidote, in Alvard's terms, to the cold flatness of geometric abstraction. Nuagist exhibitions, organized mostly by Alvard between 1955 and 1973, gathered a shifting cast of French and foreign painters, among them Jean Messagier, René Duvillier, Frédéric Benrath, and Fernando Lerín. Their abstract landscapes do not depict skies but evoke clouds and whirlpools for their vitality; emptiness borrowed from East Asian painting suggests infinity, and paint is blotted with rags while still wet to build luminous veils. Nuagisme sits alongside lyrical abstraction, Tachisme, and Art Informel, and shares Abstract Expressionism's improvisational energy.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Translucent, veiled layers of paint that keep depth and air within the picture field
  • Organic, weather-like forms - whirlpools, knots, volutes, cloud banks - suggested rather than depicted
  • Blotting and wiping wet paint with rags to build luminous transparency
  • Strategic emptiness that suggests infinity, echoing East Asian ink-painting traditions
  • Abstract landscape as a bridge between outer nature and inner feeling

Key figures

  • Julien Alvard (1916-1974) — Art critic who named Nuagisme and organized most of its exhibitions, 1955-1973
  • Jean Messagier (1920-1999) — Leading nuagiste whose airy, seasonal abstractions exemplify the style

Example works

  • Monstres d'été — Jean Messagier (1967)
  • Le Sexe des vallées — Jean Messagier (1970)

Sources

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