Image: Aubette 1928, Strasbourg
Cécile Bart will be the subject of a talk at L’Aubette 1928 in Strasbourg on Saturday 3 October 2026, from 4pm to 5:30pm. Titled ‘Cécile Bart, l’abstraction mouvementée’, the session takes the form of a conversation with Isabelle Ewig and Agathe Mareuge and is part of the Musées de Strasbourg events programme. Admission is free.
For some 40 years, Bart has worked on a kind of painting that sets abstract colours and forms in motion, developing it in close relation to architecture, cinema, dance and the people who look at it. According to the museums, each of her exhibitions is conceived as something to be experienced over a stretch of time, encouraging visitors to move sideways past the works, take them in as a sweeping view or study them at close range.
The title of the talk is a deliberate nod to ‘Cercles mouvementés’ by Sophie Taeuber-Arp, an artist closely tied to the venue. The Aubette was inaugurated on 16 February 1928 inside an 18th-century building, after the Mulhouse builders Paul and André Horn brought in Taeuber-Arp, Hans Jean Arp and Theo van Doesburg to design its entertainment halls. Working with simple geometric shapes and a restricted range of colours, the three artists treated the interiors – from furniture and signage to typography – as a single total work of art.
That scheme was covered over from 1938. The cinema-dance hall and staircase were listed as a historical monument in 1985, followed by the ballroom and foyer bar in 1989, and two subsequent building campaigns were completed in 1994 and 2006. The museums now use the Aubette 1928 for art and cultural events; it is open from Wednesday to Saturday, 2pm to 6pm, with free entry.
