Michel SEUPHOR

Michel SEUPHOR (1901 - 1999)

In 1921, Michel Seuphor, in collaboration with Jozef Peeters and Geert Pijnenburg, published the magazine Het Overzicht (Le Panorama) in Antwerp. In 1922, he came into contact with avant-garde artists from major European cities, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam and Paris. He became friends with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Marino di Teana, Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Ozenfant, Tzara, Gleizes, Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marinetti, Severini, Torres-García, painters as well Cubist, Dadaist, Futurist, Constructivist or neoplastics 1.

Settled in Paris in 1925, in collaboration with Enrico Prampolini and Paul Dermée, he published the International Documents of the New Spirit. He then founded the Circle and Square group with Joaquín Torres García by bringing together artists who claimed to be neoplasticism professed by Mondrian. In 1930, the three issues of the magazine of the same title appeared. Michel Seuphor organized group exhibitions, the first in 1930, in which Mondrian, Arp, Taueber, Léger, Schwitters, Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Pevsner or Sartoris2 took part.
Sick, Michel Seuphor moved away from Paris and the Abstraction-Création group, created in 1932 by Vantongerloo, continued the work of Cercle et Carré, which was taken over in 1939 by the group of Réalités Nouvelles which became Association et Salon in 1946.
From December 1950 to February 1951, to prepare his book on Mondrian, he stayed in New York, where he met many artists: Marcel Duchamp, De Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Stuart Davis, Richter, Gallatin, Morgan Russell, Reinhardt, Newman in particular 3.
Michel Seuphor organizes numerous exhibitions such as in 1949, The First Masters of Abstract Art, in 1958, 50 years of Abstract Art, in 1959 in the United States, Construction and Geometry Painting or the large retrospective exhibition of Mondrian at the museum the Orangerie des Tuileries the same year.