Nouvelle Tendance

Title of a series of exhibitions held in Europe in the 1960s. The first of these, a result of the initiative of the Yugoslav critic Matko Mestrovic, took place at the Galerija Suvremene Umjetnosti in Zagreb in 1961, under the title Nove Tendencije, and brought to light the common bond among young contemporary artists working broadly within the Constructivist tradition in Eastern and Western Europe. For the first time since the 1920s there was a widely based movement transcending national frontiers, which was working to counter romantic and individualistic notions of artistic practice, and place the scientific notion of 'research' in the foreground. Among the artists contributing to this first exhibition were the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel of Paris, Gruppo N of Padua and Gruppo T, which comprised an international cross-section of artists including Gerhard von Graevenitz from the Netherlands and Richard Lippold from the USA.

See the Abbreviations for further details.