Exhibitions - The Battle of Colours and Project for a Revolution: Vasarely and Architecture
Matthew Heins
La Bataille des couleurs [The Battle of Colours]
13 February – 17 August 2026
Located at the foot of the Centre Pompidou construction site, Maison Pompidou serves as a permanent hub for information and resources on the Centre’s history, architecture, and forthcoming transformation.
Its first temporary exhibition, "la Bataille des couleurs" (The Battle of Colours), revisits the building’s chromatic history from 1971 to 1977. Before becoming iconic, its visual identity was the subject of intense debate and controversy, retraced here through firsthand accounts, drawings, photographs, previously unpublished documents, and interior design objects (such as tables, lighting fixtures, buckets, cables, etc.).
Projet pour une révolution: Vasarely and Architecture
16 June – 1 November 2026
Conceived to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Vasarely Foundation, inaugurated in 1976, "Projet pour une révolution" (Project for a Revolution) not only revisits the construction of this emblematic building of Op art, whose founding figure was Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), but also reflects on the place and function of architecture throughout his œuvre.
From the first architectural integrations in Caracas in 1954, envisioned as the ideal mode of presentation for his visual creations, to the unrealised project of the Cité polychrome du bonheur (Polychrome City of Happiness), Vasarely moved beyond the synthesis of the arts championed by the Espace group, which he joined in the 1950s, towards a broader reflection on the nature of the artwork itself, as well as on the conditions of its production, dissemination, and conservation within a profoundly social dimension.