Paris Post War: Art and existentialism 1945-55

Thus the human body tortured, the human face tortured, the idea of the torture of the body and the human head, in the 20th century, as a deliberate act by man himself, mass produced, anonymously, the idea itself being torturing, although to a different

degree - all this has found its plastic expression in a series of

works by the most revolutionary painter in the world after

Picasso - Fautrier.

From Note on the Hostages Group of Paintings by Fautrier

(P Seghers, Paris, 1946) Translated by Barbara Wright.

Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55 at the Tate Gallery until 5 September.

See next Monday's Independent for reader offers.