For a decade now, at Art Paris, the Huberty & Breyne gallery has been championing established and up-and-coming artists linked to or inspired by the 9^th art.  Its new project for 2025 offers viewers a portrait-in-drawings of France’s cultural heritage through the work (spanning more than sixty years) of three iconic artists – Georges Wolinski, Jean-Marc Reiser and Claire Bretécher. In the words of François Cavanna, co-founder of Hara Kiri and, later, Charlie Hebdo, “A good press cartoon is a punch in the face.” And this is exactly the approach adopted by Huberty & Breyne here. Its project takes a long cool look at society’s failings while powerfully affirming a peculiarly French freedom of expression.

When we immerse ourselves in the work of Georges Wolinski, we can be certain that the artist will shake up our ideas. Certain too that his combination of autobiography and fiction is always firmly anchored in the reality of its time, always honest and sincere. His aim is to reflect carefully, and to make us do the same, while accepting that he might sometimes be wrong. And he employs whatever means may be necessary to achieve this, as his work so amply demonstrates – from outright provocation when devising covers for Hara Kiri and Charlie Hebdo to pure poetry, the sheer escapism of his solitary figures declaiming odes to the sun and curling up in bouquets of flowers.

Jean-Marc Reiser was a friend of Wolinski and similarly championed the absolute sanctity of freedom of expression. A self-taught artist, Reiser made his debut at Hara Kiri, where Wolinski took him under his wing. An early adherent of the environmentalist cause, he torpedoed the conventions of press illustration and cartoon art with his gritty humour and was adept at highlighting the faults, big and small, of the average Frenchman. Reiser is known for his explosive style focusing on content of an equally explosive nature.

Alongside the work of Wolinski and Reiser, the gallery is showing a tiny selection of works by Claire Bretécher. Over the years, Bretécher also created a body of work that is remarkable in more ways than one. Her criticism of contemporary society was as acutely insightful as it was mercilessly scathing. No shortcoming, minor or otherwise, escaped her notice. And it is thanks to such uncompromising honesty that Bretécher’s work had such an impact on its time, and that it remains relevant today. Reading her in 2025 – post Charlie Hebdo, post the advent of movements like MeToo and Woke – is to recognise just how contemporary Bretécher really is.

Bretécher, Reiser, Wolinski… Three big names. Three unique artists, each with their own distinctive graphic style. Three champions of freedom of expression, unparalleled in their ability to capture French society, its idiosyncracies and its shortcomings, and to make us laugh, to move us, and to surprise us. There is nothing gratuitous in the work of these three artists; but there is a great deal of intelligence. And Huberty & Breyne is proud to share that intelligence with visitors to this exhibition.

EXHIBITION
From Thursday 03 April to Sunday 06 April 2025
Thursday 03 April 2025 : 12:00 a.m - 8:00 p.m
Friday 04 April 2025 : 12:00 a.m - 9:00 p.m
Saturday 05 April 2025 : 12:00 a.m - 8:00 p.m
Sunday 06 April 2025 : 12:00 a.m - 7:00 p.m

PARIS | Art Paris 2025
Grand Palais
7 avenue Winston Churchill
Paris 8e