Judit Reigl

Judit Reigl (1923–2020) was a French painter born in Hungary. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, she settled in Paris in 1950. Her early French work engaged with Surrealism, combining unfamiliar figures and unexpected associations into imaginary worlds. She subsequently developed a gestural approach in which bodily movement, paint and the marks left on canvas became essential parts of the composition. Painting emerged through direct encounters with its materials.

The human figure nevertheless remained a recurring possibility. In the Homme series, begun in 1966, large, often fragmented torsos appear charged with movement. Homme, dated 1967, belongs to the Centre Pompidou collection. Moving between bodily imagery and abstraction, Reigl sustained an open investigation of the changes that could arise during the act of painting.