“École de Paris” In and Out of Paris (1928–1930): A Transregional Perspective on the Exhibitions of the “School of Paris” in Venice, Cambridge, Recife, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Paris quarter of Montparnasse became a focal point for an internationalized art field, and artists’ transnational mobility and migration laid the basis for the city’s image as cosmopolitan hub. Art critics and curators of the interwar period soon used the term École de Paris (“School of Paris”) for artists who immigrated to the French capital, and more rarely for French artists who attracted these foreigners with their art and academies, thus underscoring Paris’s status as a center of modern art. In the recent past, numerous studies on the School of Paris have focused on the role of foreign artists within the Parisian art scene and its dynamics of inclusion and exclusion.[1] The present article, however, examines how the label was shaped within transregional dynamics. It focuses on artists and critics that were both active within Paris and curated exhibitions of the School of Paris elsewhere. Thus, they transformed and relocated the label and the implied image of Paris as a center of modern art and a site of migrant artists.During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Paris quarter of Montparnasse became a focal point for an internationalized art field, and artists’ transnational mobility and migration laid the basis for the city’s image as cosmopolitan hub. Art critics and curators of the interwar period soon used the term École de Paris (“School of Paris”) for artists who immigrated to the French capital, and more rarely for French artists who attracted these foreigners with their art and academies, thus underscoring Paris’s status as a center of modern art. In the recent past, numerous studies on the School of Paris have focused on the role of foreign artists within the Parisian art scene and its dynamics of inclusion and exclusion.[1] The present article, however, examines how the label was shaped within transregional dynamics. It focuses on artists and critics that were both active within Paris and curated exhibitions of the School of Paris elsewhere. Thus, they transformed and relocated the label and the implied image of Paris as a center of modern art and a site of migrant artists.