In 1871, at the Hôtel des Étrangers, in Paris’ Latin Quarter, practically at the same time as or just after the Commune (in which several of the latter took part) a dozen of the greatest rebel poets, including Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Charles Cros, Germain Nouveau and André Gill, came together around a common project, co-written and designed, outsized and, in more than one respect, subversive: the Album Zutique. It was one of the first and most important collective works that heralded the modern spirit in Europe. From Picasso to Picabia, from Calder to Miró, from Gabrielle Buffet to Arp, from Hains to Bryen and Villeglé, from Matta to Brauner, from Brecht to Filliou, from Beuys to Paik, from Germaine Richier to Hartung, from Salomé to Fetting, from Camilla Adami to Peter Saul, from Klein to Tinguely, from Spoerri to Kaprow, from Warhol to Basquiat, from McCarthy to Rhoades, from Roth to Rainer, from Burroughs to Gysin, from Pommereulle to Fleischer ─ not forgetting the various forms of action art, including the Happening – a hundred works are brought together offering for the first time ever different types of collaborative works from public and private collections.

This exhibition will provide evidence that philosophers, writers, musicians, filmmakers ─ all genres – have also produced experimental collective works that, by their very singularity, challenge and question the scale of “market values” and dominant aesthetic codes.