This paper will explore the articulation of a theory of a modern French tradition of painting in the war-time and post-war writings of Jean Bazaine. After being de-mobilised, Bazaine returned to his studio and to writing articles about the state of contemporary art, as he had begun to do for journals such as Esprit in the 1930’s. He also organized the exhibition of recent paintings by young artists which became known as Jeunes peintres de tradition français in May 1941 at Galerie Braun. This discreet exhibition presented the artists and their paintings who would, upon the liberation, become known as the re-born Nouvelle École de Paris; although in September 1944 the “school” referred to by art critics was entirely French in composition, the label was capable of acting as a memory prompt, evoking the community of modern artists active in Paris during the inter-war period which comprised both French and foreign-born artists. The vexed relationship between indigenous and foreign-born artists is also the subtext for Bazaine’s sequence of important articles in the French war-time press which dealt with the question of a viable and anti-academic French tradition of painting. These articles argued for the existence of a modern tradition of French painting in which operates upon a dialect that balances stabilizing “essential principles” against divergent and excessive forces such as the impact of outside influences.

Bazaine’s aim was to establish the Jeunes peintres as the legitimate successors to the avant-garde innovators of the past and as authentic innovators in their own right. More broadly, Bazaine believed in the possibility of radical change and the integral role of the artist in the community as a whole. His article sought to provoke artists into reflecting on the need to re-establish a humanist and spiritually motivated national community. On the level of pictorial style, he advocated a “non-figurative” style of painting with nature as its base in opposition to pure abstraction. The publication in 1948 of the Notes sur la peinture followed by articles in influential “third-way” journals such as Esprit, accompanied by exhibitions of his canvases at major galleries, established Bazaine’s principles as an important contribution to the ideologies of painting competing for primacy during the 1950’s in a highly sectarian and politicized cultural scene. This paper seeks to unravel the implications of Bazaine’s theory of tradition and non-figurative representation in relation to the question of national identity, community, and the structuring of memory in painting.