In 1960, Arman joined the movement of Nouveau Réalisme alongside Yves Klein, César, and Jean Tinguely, becoming one of the leading figures of postwar French art. Through strategies of accumulation, traces, destruction, and cutting, he transformed mass-produced and consumed objects into new works of art, revealing the material realities of contemporary society.
This exhibition presented 60 works spanning Arman’s career, from his early works of 1955 to works produced in the 1980s. Among the exhibited works was Accumulation des Haches ou Avalanche (1979), which is now in the collection of the Sezon Museum of Modern Art and was formerly installed as a sculpture in the museum garden.
The museum also holds Concert for Guitars (1985), a work composed of accumulated guitars that was subsequently destroyed during Arman’s performance Vandalism when he visited Japan.