The ravages of war are usually measured in lives lost, cities shattered, political systems disrupted.

But what of a society’s inability to express itself through art?

Harder to quantify, perhaps, that’s a problem that must be solved to make things whole again.

An exhibition at the Mystic Museum of Art highlights the efforts of one man to restore art to its role in French society in the aftermath of World War II. His unusual project influenced two generations of visual artists.

“From Crisis to Color: Derrière le Miroir (Behind the Mirror)” is the story of Paris gallery owner Aimé Maeght and the magazine he created to help the arts reemerge after four years of Nazi rule.

Maeght’s idea was to get fine art, produced inexpensively, into the hands of ordinary people. From there, he hoped, it would work its magic to heal France, which was reeling from death and destruction, but also the pain of occupation and collaboration with the enemy.

His vehicle for artistic rejuvenation was lithography, a printing technique in which an image created on a smooth stone is printed, each print considered an original.

When Maeght (pronounced “mahg”) opened his gallery in 1945, exiled artists were returning to France. In addition to displaying their work, he created a free-form publication called “Derrière le Miroir,” also known as DLM, one edition to accompany each show.

Distinct from the works on view in his gallery, the magazine consisted of lithographs by the featured artists, many of them leading Modernists.

“From Crisis to Color” features works published in DLM — all originals — by some of those luminaries, including Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall and Alexander Calder. Viewed in sequence on an undulating gray background, they trace the path of a country coming back to life, from somber hues just after the war to an eventual explosion of color.

First comes a recap of France’s wartime experience, including photos of Wehrmacht troops on the Champs-Elysées, Adolf Hitler inspecting looted artwork, refugees fleeing with what they could carry, and Charles DeGaulle at the Arc de Triomphe on Liberation Day.

A few artifacts confront viewers with a question: How would they manage if they had been there? A telephone and typewriter evoke the difficulty of contacting loved ones amid the chaos of evacuation; a vintage bicycle represents the only means of escape for many.

Artists faced this crisis along with ordinary people. Matisse, in Paris during the invasion, got out of the city and was on the verge of fleeing the country when he changed his mind.

“If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?” he wrote to his son.

The war’s impact on his work is reflected in the shaded, pared-down images he created for DLM, some of which depict anatomical complexity with simple lines.

More dramatic are the scratchy, wiry drawings of Swiss painter Alberto Giacometti, which seem infused with the disorder of postwar life. One haunting face, lines radiating from between hollow eyes, seems both alive and lifeless.

Braque, who painted skulls during the war, created DLM lithographs of birds and flowers as the horror receded, and Chagall turned to prewar nostalgia, including a soft blue scene of a painter on the streets of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame in view.

Calder’s lithographs are fully alive with brightly colored shapes evoking the moving sculptures called mobiles that were among his hallmarks.

All of this was made possible by Maeght’s approach of total freedom for the artists. Once they were at the lithographer’s stone, even he didn’t see the results until the latest edition was printed, usually just before an exhibition opened.

“The artists all loved this idea because they could create something, a direct record of what they were doing at the moment, with no filter,” Maeght’s granddaughter, Yoyo Maeght, said in 2008.

While the general dimensions of DLM stayed constant, other aspects of its format shifted with artists’ needs. It was unbound, with pages folded any number of ways. One complete edition displayed under glass is accordion-like, its only contents an unbroken red line by artist Antoni Tàpies leading to a poem on the last page.

Maeght encouraged partnerships between artists and writers, stipulating only that a “spiritual connection” exist between them. A section of the exhibition reflects these efforts, in which text was sometimes incorporated visually. In one example, a poem follows the curve of a goose’s neck.

Projects also existed between artists working in different media, such as that between painter Joan Miró and ceramicist Josep Llorens i Artigas, whose works were credited jointly to “Miró Artigas.”

“Derrière le Miroir” was published from 1946 until Maeght’s death in 1982, long enough to help launch a second generation of artists. While the masters of the early years lent the publication their prestige, in time DLM returned the favor with those who followed.

Among the younger artists on view are Ellsworth Kelly, Pablo Palazuelo, Raoul Ubac and Pol Bury, whose 1974 edition of DLM has lithographs of handwritten essays and abstracted musical notes. Pushing the boundaries of the magazine’s loose format, it also includes a flexible vinyl record that can be played.

The idea for the exhibition came from James P. Quinn, a Stonington resident and art collector who said he had found some prints in consignment shops in Palm Springs, Calif., where he lives part-time. Intrigued that each was labeled with “DLM” and a number, he did some research and learned about the magazine.

Later, when he was helping the Mystic Museum of Art plan future projects, he proposed something based on Maeght and his publication.

Susan Fisher, the museum’s executive director, said she saw in its story of exile and migration an echo of today’s world.

Preparing the show was “completely scary,” she said. Usually museums, whose collections reflect the art world’s dollar-driven perception of value, borrow from one another to assemble exhibitions. But “Derrière le Miroir” and its unsigned lithographs defied that perception by design.

“This is stuff that you and I can afford to buy,” she said.

As a result, DLM has been overlooked, and there were no museums to borrow from. So Fisher put young, internet-savvy staff members on the case, and they turned up copies at online bookstores and auction sites like eBay.

With help from the Kitchings Family Foundation and CT Humanities, they spent $45,000 to acquire 219 of DLM’s 253 unique issues. That was enough to tell the story properly, Fisher said.

Interest in the magazine is growing, and Assistant Curator Amelia Onorato said she noticed prices increasing even as she was buying up copies. Fisher would like to eventually send the exhibition on the road.

The affordability of the material was part of Quinn’s pitch for the show, but there was also the idea of being able to feature the likes of Matisse, Miró and Chagall in a small place like Mystic.

“In terms of getting big names into your museum, it would be hard to top that,” he said.

j.ruddy@theday.com

If you go

What: “From Crisis to Color: Derrière Le Miroir (Behind the Mirror)”

Where: Mystic Museum of Art, 9 Water St., Mystic

When: Through Sept. 24

Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily

Admission: $10; museum members, military families, children under 12 free

Information: mysticmuseumofart.org