Winston Branch
The Luminous Gesture

March 10 - April 30 2025

14 & 15 rue du Dragon

Winston Branch

Winston Branch

Cahiers d’Art is honoured to present Winston Branch: The Luminous Gesture, the artist’s first personal exhibition in France since his 1982 solo presentation at the Musée d’Art Moderne during the 12th Biennale de Paris, where he represented Saint Lucia.

This landmark exhibition introduces Parisian audiences to Branch’s luminous abstractions—paintings that shift between opacity and radiance, turbulence and serenity—reflecting a decades-long meditation on light, memory, and place. Spanning both spaces at Cahiers d’Art, 14 and 15 rue du Dragon, the show presents works from the early 1980s to the present, tracing the evolution of his abstraction.

Winston Branch,
Untitled, 2025
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 50 cm
23 5/8 x 19 3/4 in

Born in Saint Lucia in 1947, Branch studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) before forging a singular path in contemporary abstraction. His work, held in the collections of Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, to mention just a few, demonstrates a masterful command of colour and gesture. Through textured surfaces and subtle tonal shifts, his compositions emerge from the canvas, evoking landscapes both real and imagined.

Winston Branch,
Untitled, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
76.5 x 60.7 x 2 cm
30 1/8 x 23 7/8 x 3/4 in

His practice navigates the intersections of memory, history, and the materiality of paint. Pulsing with vibrant chromatic intensity, his works also reflect a deep engagement with post-war abstraction—layered surfaces, gestural spontaneity, and a search for transcendence through form. Examining the interplay of darkness and illumination—both formally and conceptually—his paintings reveal hidden depths beneath radiant surfaces. Light becomes a dynamic force, dissolving colour into atmosphere and transforming sensation into structure.

Winston Branch,
Summer Nights, 1996
Acrylic on canvas
140 x 240 cm
55 1/8 x 94 1/2 in

A recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome, and the Berlin Artist Programme (DAAD), Branch has exhibited widely. This exhibition marks a significant return to Paris, reconnecting with the city since his early participation in the Salon de Jeunes Peintures at the Grand Palais in 1971, which initiated his long association with the Alliance Française. His work stands as a testament to abstraction’s enduring power to convey emotion and transcendence.

At Cahiers d’Art, his paintings unfold like visual poems, rich with radiant gestures and ephemeral light. They invite contemplation, where movement and stillness, presence and absence, coexist in delicate balance.

Winston Branch,
Blue for Miles, 1982
Acrylic on canvas
82 x 356.5 cm
32 1/4 x 140 3/8 in

Branch has also been an artist-in-residence at Fisk University, Nashville, and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His contributions to art and education have earned him distinguished honours, including The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Greenwich, and recognition from the Organization of American States Award.

The Luminous Gesture at Cahiers d’Art affirms his place among the foremost abstract painters of his generation, offering a revelatory encounter with an artist whose work continues to evolve, surprise, and illuminate.

A lifelong engagement with abstraction, keen observation, and lived experience converge in these works, where colour and texture create unexpected visual rhymes and resonances. Deep and sustained looking reveals a nuanced multiplicity of meanings.

Shaped by his experience of moving between London, Berlin, Europe, Latin America, and the USA, his work reflects an ongoing practice of gathering inspiration from the places he has lived and visited. This sense of movement, of taking elements from one place to another, is embedded in his creative process. The painting Zachary II, for instance, travelled with him across the world before its acquisition by the Tate in 2017.

Exhibition Views

Exhibition View, Winston Branch The Luminous Gesture, Cahiers d'Art, Paris, Opening March 10, 2025, © Winston Branch 2025, Courtesy of the Artist, Varvara Roza Gallery and Cahiers d'Art, Photo: Claire Dorn

All artworks © Winston Branch 2025
Artwork Photo Credit: Claire Dorn
 Exhibition Views Photo Credit: Claire Dorn