HELENE BAILLY is an art gallery in Paris that exhibits works by artists from the Second School of Paris, including Serge Poliakoff, Zao Wou-Ki, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Hans Hartung.

After the Second World War, Paris sought to reclaim its role as a global artistic capital in the face of New York’s growing influence. The “New School of Paris” refers to the group of painters and sculptors active in the city during the 1950s who carried forward its creative spirit while reinventing it.

Coined by art critics, the term encompasses a wide range of mostly abstract approaches, brought together by artists from diverse backgrounds who shared a deep connection to the Parisian art scene.

Among them, Serge Poliakoff, Zao Wou-Ki, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva represent a generation seeking a formal spirituality, balancing the energy of gesture with compositional rigor.

Many of these artists, often from distant countries, embraced abstraction to express the renewed sense of freedom and the search for new forms that characterized the postwar period. Though they never issued a collective manifesto, they were united by their attachment to Paris and frequently exhibited together, whether in major salons or renowned galleries.

Their work was quickly recognized: as early as the 1950s, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris featured several of them in key exhibitions, while their pieces entered major international collections such as those of MoMA in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The range of artistic paths grouped under this label reflects the vitality of Paris as a postwar hub for abstract art.