Danton 1789 1959

History painting… with a difference! History painting is an art genre which focuses on large-scale narratives from the past or mythology. But have you ever seen a history painting in an abstract style? This is an acrylic painting by the Hungarian-French painter Endre Rozsda (1913-1999). It was created in 1959, just over a decade after the artist was forced to leave his home country of France due to the Nazi invasion. As a Hungarian Jew, Rozsda remained in hiding for almost the entirety of the Second World War. Perhaps as a response to his personal tragedies, Rozsda moved away from figurative representation and adopted an abstract style in the mid 1940s. This painting is known as ‘Danton 1789’. It takes its title from the name of Georges Danton (1759-1794), a politician during the French Revolution. Danton was executed by guillotine at the age of just 34, charged with questioning The Terror. This was a period of violence in France during which an estimated 17,000 people were executed for opposing Maximilien Robespierre’s revolutionary government. It’s known as a time of paranoia, suspicion, and disorder. Here, Endre Rozsda represents the events of the French Revolution as tumultuous chaos. The painting is explosive and riotous. The canvas is dominated by shades of blue and white. These colours are broken by slashes of red, symbolic of death and violence. Take a close look at the painting. You can just make out figures and recognisable shapes such as wheels emerging from the frenzy of shapes. Rozsda effectively captures the chaos and confusion of the French Revolution in the language of lyrical abstraction. ‘Abstraction lyrique’ emerged in post-war Paris as a response to American Abstract Expressionism. Unlike the geometric shapes associated with cubism, lyrical abstraction was looser and more painterly.