Following a symposium organised in 2012 by ISELP, ENSAV La Cambre and Espace 251 Nors, this book explores the links between painting and the city.

For contemporary painting – perhaps more so than for other forms of expression such as sculpture or performance art – the challenge of ‘open-air’ expression is no small one. It is a question – literally and figuratively – of breaking out of the conventional framework to plunge into a decompartmentalised space that considerably broadens the field of pictorial possibilities. The same goes for contextual interventions based on colour, for compositions integrating natural or artificial light, or for free or even protesting pictorial interventions, such as graffiti and its variations.

These emerging practices are studied here through several axes of approach: formal and technological innovation, the committed and contextual character of the works, the recognition of new practices by the art world, the relationship with the public surveying the urban or landscape space, etc. This volume also honours the little-known work of the Belgian artist Jean Glibert, who founded the “Urban Space” workshop at the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels (ENSAV) in La Cambre, Brussels.