PARIS.- With over 35,000 drawings, the Centre Pompidou’s Graphic Arts Department houses one of the world’s largest collections of works on paper from the 20th and 21st centuries. This collection, exceptional in its richness and diversity, has never been the subject of an exhibition of this scale. The Drawing Unlimited exhibition at the Grand Palais thus offers an opportunity to reveal the priceless treasures in this collection for the first time, providing a unique insight into how this medium was totally reinvented during the 20th century.

Many artists have embraced this original and cathartic form of expression in order to push the boundaries of art. Beyond the sheet of paper or traditional sketchbook, drawing has taken over walls and installations. It has opened up to new practices, extending its scope to other forms of expression, including photography, film, and digital media, making its boundaries increasingly fluid and open. The renewed interest shown by younger generations of artists in this simple and accessible medium is proof of its genuine relevance. While the notion of drawing itself needs be developed to meet the aesthetic and visual challenges of the 21st century, this does not preclude a return to the fundamentals of a practice that, by essence, remains open to invention and expression of thought, whether conscious or unconscious.

Drawing Unlimited highlights the collection’s most important and rarely shown pieces, including works by Balthus, Marc Chagall, Willem de Kooning, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Dubuffet, George Grosz, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso, also featuring works by Karel Appel, Jean Michel Basquiat, Roland Barthes, Robert Breer, Trisha Brown, Marlene Dumas, William Kentridge, Robert Longo, Giuseppe Penone, Robert Rauschenberg, Kiki Smith and Antoni Tàpies. The exhibition does not limit itself to the confines of the sheet of paper, demonstrating that drawing can exist as a performance, an installation, or even in its animated form.

With a selection of nearly 400 drawings by 120 artists, Drawing Unlimited does not attempt to provide a history of drawing in the 20th and 21st centuries - which the very nature of this archive would render impossible - instead offering a sensitive and subjective exploration of the Graphic Arts Department’s collection. Without any chronological order, the exhibition takes a sensory approach, with works following on from one another and responding to each other in a domino effect. Structured around four sequences—study, narrate, trace, and animate— the exhibition offers a unique insight into a fragile, inventive, and ever-relevant art form.