Salon du dessin 2023

Zeit Contemporary Art is honored to participate in the Salon du Dessin 2023, one of the leading international fairs dedicated to drawings and works on paper. Held at the historic Palais Brongniart in Paris, the Salon brings together more than thirty international galleries presenting works from Old Masters to modern and contemporary art. For ZCA’s inaugural presentation in France, the booth traces drawing as a privileged site of experimentation, from Post-Impressionism to contemporary art, with works by Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Sam Gilliam, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Amoako Boafo, Nelo Vinuesa, and others.

The presentation explores how works on paper have shaped new approaches to the body, landscape, and modern subjectivity. Gauguin’s rare watercolor monotype transforms the Breton landscape through color and memory, while Picasso’s wartime study of reclining nudes reveals drawing as a space of psychological compression and formal invention. Works by Wesselmann, Warhol, Valdés, and Boafo extend this inquiry into Pop, portraiture, and contemporary identity, showing the body as both image and sign, intimate record and cultural statement.

A further group considers drawing as a generator of abstraction, structure, and gesture. Arp and Picabia bring the radical freedom of Dada into works on paper, while Toroni, LeWitt, and Mangold use line, repetition, geometry, and systems to test composition and perception. Gilliam’s unique hand-colored screenprints and Vinuesa’s oil works on paper expand drawing into chromatic gesture and emotional landscape. Across these sections, ZCA’s presentation reflects drawing not as a secondary medium, but as a field where modern and contemporary artists have redefined form, image, and artistic thought.