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Featured lot selected by the auctions House.
Stanley’s Auction
71
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COUTAUD Lucien (1904–1977)
See original version (French)
71
-
COUTAUD Lucien (1904–1977)
See original version (French)
Estimate €500 - €600
Voluntary lot
Description
COUTAUD Lucien (1904–1977)
“Dormeuse des eaux”, ink and wash, signed and dated 1973 in the lower left-hand corner, 45 x 54 cm. Note: Lucien Coutaud was a French painter, born on 13 December 1904 in Meynes, Gard, and died in Paris on 21 June 1977. Lucien Coutaud was born on 13 December 1904 in Meynes, a small village in the Gard, situated between Nîmes and Beaucaire. From a fairly early age, Coutaud displayed a restless, secretive and anxious nature; he was different from his peers and aware of his difference. Coutaud was a tormented man, both self-conscious and generous. As soon as he finished school – and after completing an apprenticeship as a watchmaker with his father – Lucien Coutaud enrolled, in 1920, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, where the engraver Armand Coussens taught. That same year, he developed a passion for bullfights – the ultimate confrontation between life and death – alongside his friend Albert Dubout, whose cartoons, as well as his illustrations and posters, would leave their mark on several generations. At the age of twenty, Lucien Coutaud moved to Paris to study drawing at the Montparnasse art schools. This young man from Nîmes was as interested in the Primitives at the Louvre as he was in Chirico, Max Ernst and Paul Klee. In 1926, he met Charles Dullin, who asked him to design the sets and costumes for *The Birds*, a play by Aristophanes adapted by Bernard Zimmer, whilst he was completing his military service that same year. In 1931, back in Paris, he became friends with a young actor named Jean-Louis Barrault. In 1938, he designed the sets and costumes for *Plutus*, inspired by Aristophanes, for Charles Dullin at the Atelier. That same year, Jacques Copeau asked him to design the set for *As You Like It* for the Mai musical in Florence. He also took an interest in tapestry from 1935 onwards. During the Second World War, he developed this craft and devoted himself to painting. In 1941, he created the sets, props and costumes for André Obey’s *800 mètres*, directed by Jean-Louis Barrault, which was performed at the Stade Roland Garros. He designed the sets for Paul Claudel’s *Le Soulier de Satin* for the Comédie-Française in 1943. That same year, he was one of the founders of the Salon de Mai. In 1945, he designed the sets and costumes for *Le Poète*, a ballet by Boris Kochno, staged at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt by Roland Petit. In 1948, he designed the sets for the ballet *Jeux de printemps*, set to music by Darius Milhaud at the Opéra-Comique. In 1950, he painted the sets and costumes for *Les Éléments*, a ballet by Serge Lifar presented at the Versailles Music Festival. That same year, he illustrated Arthur Rimbaud’s *Une saison en enfer* at the request of the society *Les Bibliophiles de France* and *Overseas Book-Lovers* (New York). In 1953, he collaborated on Cherubini’s *Médée*, performed by Maria Callas and directed by André Barsacq, at the Maggio Musicale in Florence. His figurative style, evolving towards dreamlike abstraction, is close to a form of surrealism characterised by southern themes and colours: the poetry of bullfighting, the drama of death. This painter-poet, who was a friend of Jean Blanzat, André Fraigneau, Marc Bernard, Jean-Louis Barrault, Oscar Dominguez, Paul Éluard, Picasso, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian, Gilbert Lely, Jean Paulhan, Yves Tanguy, Félix Labisse and Jean-Paul Sartre, never ceased to assert his independence. Lucien Coutaud invented ‘Eroticomagie’ (in Christophe Dauphin, *Lucien Coutaud et l’Eroticomagie*, Supérieur Inconnu, 2009), which is a form of painting centred on a world, on an individual constantly undergoing metamorphosis, yet always gendered, as seen in the impressive ‘Taureaumagies’ series, composed of intertwined bodies, or the ‘Swan Figures’ series; an individual who feels compelled to merge – though not always successfully, and at the risk of losing oneself in the process – into a community with others. Eroticomagie is the carnal and dreamlike fusion of eros and magic, of reality and dreams, of the painter and his inner world, of the viewer and the viewed.
See original version (French)
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Pictures credits:
Hugo Sanchez
See original version (French)
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