Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen revisits François Morellet's prints for his centenary

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen opened "François Morellet – L'Esprit de suite (bis)" on 10 October 2026, an exhibition centred on the printed work of the French artist François Morellet (1926–2016), a leading figure of geometric abstraction. The show belongs to the programme marking the centenary of his birth, an initiative of the Estate Morellet and the Centre Pompidou, and the museum takes part in the 100 x Morellet series of events.

The exhibition looks back to an earlier collaboration. In 2015 the museum invited Morellet to present a selection from the more than four hundred prints he made over his career, in an exhibition titled "L'Esprit de suite". According to the museum, it was one of the few exhibitions to concentrate on his printmaking, and it was the last project the artist carried through. On that occasion the museum also commissioned "Un angle deux vues pour trois arcs" for its façade; the museum says the blue neon line has since become inseparable from the image of the building.

The new presentation is framed as a tribute to, and a playful echo of, that 2015 project. It gathers Morellet's main print series from the 1960s to the 2000s and, in the museum's account, shows how he combined strict systems with a sense of play. Among the works on view is "Au bon vouloir" (2009), a stamp printed on vellum.

The display is not confined to a single gallery. In the entrance hall, "3D Ephémère" is made of black adhesive applied directly to the wall, while the museum's seventeenth-century Italian room holds "Giordano défiguré", a work from Morellet's Défiguration series made specifically for the museum. The museum also recalls the artist's description of himself as "the monstrous son of Mondrian and Picabia".

Two talks organised by the Sambac accompany the exhibition on 21 October 2026: a visit of the show in the afternoon, followed by a lecture on Morellet by Michel Gauthier. The exhibition continues until 7 February 2027.