Salon de Mai

The Salon de Mai (the May Salon) is a group of French artists which formed in a café on the Rue Dauphine in Paris in 1943 during the German occupation of France.

In 1943, the Salon de Mai was founded as an Association (declared in 1944) in opposition to Nazi ideology and its condemnation of degenerate art. It founder members were the art critic Gaston Diehl and the painters, sculptors and engravers Henri-Georges Adam, Emmanuel Auricoste, Lucien Coutaud, Robert Couturier, Jacques Despierre (who suggested naming the salon after the month in which its first meetings were held), Marcel Gili, Léon Gischia, Francis Gruber, Jean Le Moal, Alfred Manessier, André Marchand, Edouard Pignon, Gustave Singier, Claude Venard and Roger Vieillard, who together formed it direction committee. Several of them (Coutaud, Gischia, Le Moal, Manessier, Marchand, ORAZI, Pignon, Singier) participated in the 1941 exhibition Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française ().

Under its president Gaston Diehl the first Salon de Mai exhibition took place in the galerie Pierre Maurs (3, avenue Matignon) from 29 May to 29 June 1945. Its honorary committee was made up of Germain Bazin, Jacques Dupont, René Huyghe, Bernard Dorival, Michel Florisoone, Pierre Ladoué and Marc Thiboutet. Its judging panel was headed by Jean Follain. The catalogue of this first Salon had a preface by Gaston Diehl, with texts by René Bertelé and André Rolland de Renéville, poems by Jacques Prévert, Lucien Becker, André Frénaud, Jean Follain and Guillevic. It was then organised at the 'Gallery Arts' in Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and later transferred with its rooms to the 'Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris' (in the modern building of the former 'Palais des Musées d'Art Moderne', then 'Palais de Tokyo'

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