Starting September 10, Galerie Berès and Galerie Le Minotaure will present the exhibition Au-delà du cubisme (Beyond Cubism), bringing together works by Serge Férat, Léopold Survage, and François Angiboult (one of the pseudonyms of Baroness Hélène d’Œttingen). The exhibition will open at both galleries on September 10, 2026, and run until October 31. From October 31 onwards, it will continue at Galerie Berès and its extension on Rue de Beaune, concluding on Friday, December 18, 2026.
From the 1910s onwards, each of these three artists contributed in their own way to renewing an artistic language then largely dominated by the figures of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The incorporation of a vibrant, fresh, and intimate use of color—stemming from their Russian heritage—transformed their aesthetic explorations into a genuine renewal of Cubist creation. Their constant oscillation between the deconstruction of form and the persistence of a symbolic, figurative aesthetic reveals them as multifaceted, sensitive, and highly innovative artists. As painters, decorators, illustrators, collectors, and patrons, they hold a unique place in the history of the Parisian avant-garde. Alongside Guillaume Apollinaire, they played a key role in the financial and intellectual rescue of the journal *Les Soirées de Paris*, which became a major laboratory for artistic and literary modernity.
Their work unfolds within the broader context of the explorations undertaken by the Puteaux Group and the *Section d’Or* (Golden Section); the exhibitions organized by these groups in 1912, 1920, and 1925 sought to expand the scope of Cubism by opening it up to new concepts of space, rhythm, color, and movement. The founding of the second *Section d’Or* group by Survage in 1919—hosted at the home of Baroness d’Oettingen and Serge Férat—established a collaboration between Russian artists who had embraced the Cubist movement and painters from the Puteaux group. Heirs to both Paul Cézanne and Cubist experiments—yet also close to the Italian Futurists—Férat, Survage, and Angiboult retained a fondness for geometric construction and the fragmentation of planes, applying these elements to a style of painting that was more poetic, colorful, and decorative.

The exhibition opens with a significant collection of landscapes, still lifes, and portraits created between 1910 and 1930 by Serge Férat and Léopold Survage. In Férat’s work, the familiar objects of Cubist still lifes—bottles, glasses, fruit, or sheet music—are combined with a quest for balance and legibility that distinguishes his work from the more radical experiments of Analytic Cubism. After World War I, his landscapes and portraits reveal a softening of this geometry, enriched by the influence of Henri “Le Douanier” Rousseau and an increasingly pronounced decorative sensibility. The artist holds a special place for the Berès Gallery, which has built a major collection over the years that reflects the artist’s personal evolution through the lens of Cubist influence and his Slavic sensibility. For Survage, explorations of space and light led to a genuine reinvention of the modern landscape. Among the most original examples is the *Homme dans la ville* (Man in the City) series (1915–1920), in which geometric architecture, checkerboard patterns, and enigmatic silhouettes create a universe poised between theatrical set design, cinematic montage, and a poetic meditation on the contemporary city. The exhibition also highlights the artists’ shared interest in popular forms of entertainment and their contribution to breaking down the boundaries between artistic disciplines. As early as 1913, Survage conceived *Rythmes colorés* (Colored Rhythms), an ambitious abstract film project based on the continuous transformation of shapes and colors over time. A true pioneer of abstract cinema, the project—though acclaimed by Apollinaire—never progressed beyond the prototype stage due to a lack of the necessary technical and financial resources for its realization.

Theater also plays a central role in the work of Serge Férat. Fascinated by the circus, acrobats, Harlequin, Pierrot, and *commedia dell’arte* characters, he developed a world in which the stage became a natural extension of his pictorial explorations. In 1917, at Apollinaire’s request, he designed the costumes for the surrealist drama *Les Mamelles de Tirésias* (The Breasts of Tiresias). His friendship with Pierre Albert-Birot continued throughout the interwar period through numerous theatrical projects. The exhibition brings together set designs for *Matoum en Matoumoisie*, costumes, and rare puppet maquettes created for *Les Couleurs* and for the experiments of the Théâtre du Plateau, founded by Pierre Albert-Birot. These works bear witness to the constant interplay between painting, poetry, theater, and the decorative arts that characterized the avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s.

Finally, the exhibition highlights the work of François Angiboult, whose paintings are distinguished by a unique synthesis of decorative Cubism, Slavic folklore, and the applied arts. From an early stage, Angiboult was interested in breaking down the barriers between artistic disciplines; for him, painting, textiles, embroidery, decorative objects, poetry, and theater were all part of a single aesthetic quest. Shown at the second *Section d’Or* exhibition and later at his solo show at the Galerie Percier in 1924, his work reveals a distinctive artistic voice that helped expand the boundaries of Cubism toward new forms in which art and everyday life tend to merge.
Spanning more than three decades of creative work, *Au-delà du cubisme* (Beyond Cubism) invites us to rediscover an alternative history of the avant-garde: that of artists who, without rejecting Cubist innovations, extended their legacy into cinema, theater, the decorative arts, and a freer, more poetic, and more open conception of modernity.