Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou’s collection
December 16, 2025
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March 15, 2026
With over 35,000 drawings, the Centre Pompidou’s graphic art collection is one of the world’s largest collections. For the first time, more than 300 works by 120 artists including Dubuffet, Basquiat, Delaunay, Kentridge and many others reveal, at the Grand Palais, a constantly reinvented art of drawing.
The Centre Pompidou’s graphic art collection is one of the most important holdings of works on paper from the 20th and 21st centuries. This exceptional collection, remarkable for its richness and diversity, has never before been the subject of an exhibition of such scale. Drawing outside the lines offers the opportunity to reveal these invaluable treasures for the first time and to understand how this medium was completely reinvented in the 20th century.
Many artists have embraced this original and cathartic mode of expression to push the boundaries of art. Beyond the sheet of paper or the traditional sketchbook, its domain extends to other supports. Drawing has entered the realm of the wall and installation and opens up to other practices: photographic, cinematographic, and digital. The renewed interest of younger generations of artists demonstrates the ongoing relevance of this simple and accessible medium.
The exhibition highlights major works from the collection that are rarely shown, including pieces by Balthus, Marc Chagall, Willem de Kooning, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Dubuffet, George Grosz, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Karel Appel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roland Barthes, Robert Breer, Trisha Brown, Marlène Dumas, William Kentridge, Robert Longo, Giuseppe Penone, Robert Rauschenberg, Kiki Smith, and Antoni Tàpies.
With more than 300 works by 120 artists, the exhibition offers a unique exploration of the Centre Pompidou’s graphic art collection, organized around four sequences: studying, narrating, drawing, and animating. Without chronological order, the parcours is based on a sensitive approach where works succeed and respond to one another in a domino effect. A unique dive into an art that is fragile, inventive, and ever-relevant.
