"This catalogue offers the opportunity to discover the complete oeuvre of one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century: Simon Hantaï. From the first paintings after Hantaï's arrival in Paris in 1948 to the pliage paintings, this publication, which covers sixty years of the painter's life and accompanies the first retrospective of Hantaï's work since 1876, reveals the complexity and extreme diversity of his creation: from the Surrealist paintings to the writing-paintings, from the Mariales (the first series of works created using the pliage or folding method) to the Laissées. Hantaï's approach is analyzed at each stage of its development. Essays, accounts by those closest to the artist, and a detailed chronology, as well as numerous hitherto unpublished illustrations, complement this first major reference work on the artist."--P. [4] of cover.