In 1943, during the Occupation, the art critic Gaston Diehl had been holding exhibitions pushing the constraints of the Nazi prohibition of Modern “Degenerate” Art, and allowed himself to imagine a celebration of liberation, taking the form of an exhibition of new art, a beautiful eclecticism unsuppressed by dogma, “without barriers and without limitations”, to enable “the spirit of creation to renew itself and become deeply intergrated into the community”. It would come to be known as the “Salon de Mai”, the metaphorical Spring.
