In 1950, Barnett Newman created The Wild, a painting now housed at MoMA. Towering at 2.43 meters yet just 4 centimeters wide, the work distills Newman’s signature « zip » to its purest essence. In isolating this vertical mark, he heightened its sculptural presence—leading some to draw comparisons with the elongated figures of Alberto Giacometti—and, in the process, introduced a strikingly unconventional format that had no clear precedent.
This radical gesture gave rise to a lineage of what we now call skinny lines—a format that has since captivated artists across movements and generations. This exhibition explores that lineage, bringing together key figures from concrete art (Richard Paul Lohse), minimalism (Alan Charlton), and the Mono-Ha movement (Nobuo Sekine), alongside contemporary artists Philippe Decrauzat and Daniel Turner.
