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3 P aris became the centre for these trailblazing artists that argued figurative representation was redundant and the rigidity of geometric abstraction was out of touch. In reaction, burgeoning movements such as Art Informel, Lyrical Abstraction and Tachisme threw aside both figuration and the influence of Mondrian and Malevich to embrace a new kind of organic abstraction. These poetic movements were grounded in the subjective experience of the natural world, driven by the existential crisis of post-war Europe. Fragmented by their numerous nationalities and beliefs, this myriad group of artists were united in their comprehension of a new visual language defined by a unique sensitivity to form and colour. Turning in particular to the spiritual colour harmonies of Wassily Kandinsky and free-flowing forms of Jean Arp, these radical artists paved the way for an abstraction inspired directly by nature. Following the destruction of the Second World War, this return to the natural forms of the pastoral landscape was a vital expression of regeneration in Europe. Amidst growing tensions in Europe and the approaching referendum, this focus upon reformative post-war abstraction is made particularly significant. As Britain decides its fate on the world stage, this exhibition examines those artists that responded to the parallel crisis of the Second World War with a new organic pictorial language. A fascinating counterpoint to the major Abstract Expressionist retrospective at the Royal Academy in the autumn, this exhibition turns away from the better known New York art scene to focus upon the natural forms that developed in contemporary European abstraction. In contrast to the monumental machismo of American Abstract Expressionism across the Atlantic, this brand of lyrical abstraction was crucially introspective, with artists such as Maria Vieira da Silva and American painter Mark Tobey unravelling the very process of experience and memory in the spiralling labyrinths of their abstract canvases. In the Parisian melting pot of émigrés, Russian artists Serge Poliakoff and André Lanskoy scrutinized the spiritual musicality of colour in Kandinsky's palette to create harmonious compositions that echoed the essential forces of the natural world. French artists Maurice Estève and Roger Bissière similarly expressed the sensation of life through interlocking mosaics of vibrant tone and form. Creating a spontaneous and instinctive practice of Lyrical Abstraction, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, and Gérard Ernest Schneider, in turn, valued the freedom of colour in Kandinsky's palette as the cadences of a piece of music. Emboldened by Kandinsky's lively use of colour, these artists argued that 'painting should be looked at in the same way as music is listened to'. Nature was also central to the new aesthetic of organic abstraction in European sculpture, inspired by the universal forces of growth and transformation in the work of Jean Arp. Following his meeting with Arp in 1951, Swiss sculptor Antoine Poncet plunged into the spiritual depths of abstraction in his representation of porous cavities, which were said to 'betray nature's changes as they pass from closed to open'. Sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, who visited Arp's studio in Meudon during the 1930s, took his organic forms to the heart of their work in the windswept coastlines of St Ives and the Yorkshire Dales. Other Modern British artists, including Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon, explored their unique brand of Lyrical Abstraction as they maintained the discoveries they had made in Paris. As the dust settled across Europe in 1945 a generation of artists considered how to make contemporary art relevant. INTRODUCTION Left: Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Curved Form (Orpheus) (detail), 1956 - See page 34