Julien Alvard

Julien Alvard (1916–1974) was a French art critic and curator associated with the postwar promotion of abstract art in France. He is also known as the originator of the term Nuagisme, used to describe an art movement advanced by Alvard in the 1950s.

In June 1951, Alvard published the article “Peintres américains à Paris” in Art d’aujourd’hui, devoted to American painting. The article included reproductions of works by Robert Breer, Ralph Coburn, Ellsworth Kelly, Alfred Russell, Jack Youngerman, and other artists active in the postwar Paris art scene. The text is often cited as one of the earliest critical recognitions of the American expatriate abstract painters in Paris in the early 1950s.