Győző Vásárhelyi (Victor Vasarely) and Denise René staged two exhibitions of Lajos Kassák in the Galerie Denise René in Paris, in 1960 and 1963. The organizers included former members of the European School now living in Paris and Kassák's avant-garde artistic connections, including Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Étienne Hajdú, Vera Molnár and her husband Ferenc, Imre Pán, Michel Seuphor, Tristan Tzara. The art historical significance of these exhibitions was that they kept abreast of the contemporary West European and American artistic tendencies: along a linear art historical logic, they created continuity between the abstraction of the first two decades of the 20th century and – with a great leap in time – the geometric abstraction, op art and kinetic trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The basis to do so was, on the one hand, Kassák's oeuvre spanning from 1920 to 1960s, and on the other, the joint presentation of Kassák and Vasarely, as representatives of two periods. Their joint exhibitions and publication illustrated the vitality and continuous presence of the traditions of the Bauhaus workshop and the École de Paris in Hungarian art through Kassák's “return to Paris”. The correspondence preparing the Paris exhibitions outlines the joint artistic strategy of Denise René, Vasarely and Kassák. The moral and political background to the strategy also included the novel international evaluation of abstract art. When speaking of the first Paris Biennale of 1959 the French cultural minister André Malraux declared that “grand painting is no longer figurative” (“La grande peinture n'est plus figurative”) and “only abstract art counts”, in Hungary the predominant cultural–political marketing rejected contemporary art, preventing abstract artists from showing their works freely at home or abroad. Nevertheless, Kassák managed to realize two exhibitions in Paris, thanks to his above mentioned Paris connections and the former European School founders and members, notably Imre Pán, Étienne Hajdú, Pál Gegesi Kiss, as well as his old friend book publisher Lajos Lengyel and his own organizing skills. The partnership of Kassák and Vasarely was an adaptation of the artistic strategy of the age which was formulated also by Michel Ragon in his book The adventure of abstract art (L'aventure de l'art abstrait, 1956). In it he declared the continuity of the École de Paris on the basis of comprehensive documentation ranging from cubism, the Russian, Dutch, Czech and French geometric trends through the Bauhaus to Abstraction Création incorporating the Cercle et Carré, the Cobra group. Ragon concentrated on the convergence of the American and European abstraction, however, deriving the post-World War II situation from the Art Brut. As Michel Seuphor recalled, it was in the spring of 1960, after the ten-year monopoly of abstract expressionism, that the vigour of abstract geometric art became obvious as demonstrated by the exhibition Construction and Geometry in Painting staged in New York's Galerie Chalette. The “evolutionist” strategy gave rise to new possibilities in the art of the early 1960s and entailed the need to rewrite the history of art and to introduce a new curatorial attitude that was to affect the artmarket and had its impact on art itself. Kassák's late creative period was influenced by this strategy in various senses. At the time of the preparations for the New York exhibition of 1959, Vasarely, aged 51, invited Kassák, then 72, the Hungarian pioneer of Dadaism, activism, neo-geometrism, constructivism based on architectural principles, to exhibit in Galerie Denise René in Paris. At the same time, Vasarely put his works on display upstairs in the gallery. The parallel showing of Kassák “the source” and Vasarely as “contemporary follower” was well timed: it came a month before the monumental New York exhibition which illustrated the same continuity between the Russian, German, Czech, French and Polish early avant-garde “ancestors” and the contemporary representative of geometric abstraction. In New York Kassák was not present. After their first joint exhibition in Paris, a common serigraph album was also published including Kassák's manifesto of 1922 and Vasarely's text of 1960. Victor Vasarely was the co-curator of Galerie Denise René, who also featured as a diplomat resuming the French-Hungarian relations with the Paris showings. His activities encompassed art, international cultural relations, and commerce. Lajos Kassák was prepared for the pending action and in a few months' period he got the exhibition ready, which seemed impossible to bring about from a Hungary keeping aloof of the arena of contemporary art in the spirit of the Cold War. Between August and December 1959 Kassák managed to get the permissions for his works to leave the country and to get them transported. He got Ödön Gábor Pogány, general director of the Hungarian National Gallery, to preface the Paris catalogue. His long-time friend, photographer and book-designer Lajos Lengyel, the director of the Kossuth Press, printed the brown and black catalogue of the Galerie Denise René exhibition. Kassák's support at home had its consequences. Pogány was summoned by the Central Control Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party about the catalogue. He locked the material related to the Kassák catalogue among the confidential documents (Nr. 933). This file contains Kassák's original model for the catalogue, the linocut used for the cover and the bills of delivery, together with the summary note of Mrs Bökönyi, secretary of Pogány. The vernissage of Kassák's first exhibition in Paris was announced for 9–12 pm, 9 February 1960. The artist was not allowed to travel out of the country for the opening. Three years later, in 1963, Lajos Kassák and his wife were present at the opening of his next exhibition, as is revealed by Áron Tóbiás' interview, Lucien Hervé's photos and Pál Nagy's report. That was when Jean Cassou purchased the small Kassák picture for the Musée National de l'Art Moderne which is still there together with another Kassák picture that the artist presented as a gift. The two exhibitions meant for Lajos Kassák the last chance in both moral and material terms to break out from“the end of the world” towards Paris, in the name of the spatial and temporal continuity of avant-garde art. This is exactly why his admirers in Paris were attracted to the “constructivist Kassák” and not to the painter of lyrical abstractions as he was at that time. It namely logically followed from the “evolutionist” exhibiting strategy postulating continuity between the 1920s and the 1960s that continuity in style was also required. In Hungary, some historians charged Kassák with having a “fragmented” oeuvre. Continuity of the paths – the Magyar Műhely periodical The “evolutionist” conception, however, opened easy-totread paths for many. The occasion of Kassák's second Paris showing was a good opportunity for the Hungarian artists living in Paris, including the founders of the periodical Magyar Műhely (Hungarian Workshop) launched in 1962 (József Czudar, László Márton, Pál Nagy, Tibor Papp, János Parancs, Imre Szakál and Ervin Pátkai, later Gyula Sipos alias Pál Albert) to meet Kassák in person. The young intellectuals fleeing from various areas of Hungary after the 1956 revolution and usually identifying themselves with a “regional” attitude arrived in a Europe, in a Paris with radically active leftist intellectuals, which was, by the way, the metropolis of art. At the age of 18–20, they wanted to become “contemporaries”. Partly upon the inspiration of the Kassák exhibitions, the founders-editors of Magyar Műhely decided to reject the “exiled” attitude and run a periodical that would support the Hungarian avant-garde art that was banned or neglected at home by giving it a forumto appear. They decided tomap and support Hungarian avant-garde art as such. First they reached back to Kassák's art claiming that “revival is only possible within continuity”. As a tribute to the ancestor, they devoted an issue to him in 1965. Basically the whole editorial board agreed about Kassák's neglect in Hungary and his international artistic significance. “The first conclusion we can draw fromthe collected works exhibited at Galerie Denise René is the unbroken advance of Kassák. If in the twenties the editor of MA did perhaps more with his theoretical and organizing activity for the dissemination of constructivist art than with his pictures, in the past decades it was practically Kassák alone who translated the one-time principles into practice. The one-time principles whose essence was renewal. After a long and unsought silence, the companion of Picasso, Mondrian, Malevits and Moholy-Nagy is still speaking the same language as the cream of the international avant-garde looking for their salvation in creation instead of currying favour with the authorities or snobbish circles.” From a donation by Mrs Kassák, the editors of Magyar Műhely founded the Kassák Prize (1972) after the artist's death to reward talented young artists working in the spirit of the avant-garde. For years the prize was awarded to young artists in Hungary who thereby got interlaced in the fabric of the continuity of Hungarian avantgarde art. Adopting the strategy chosen by Kassák and Vasarely, the young editors of Magyar Műhely and its following started to write a new chapter in the history of the École de Paris.