Art
Pierre Tal Coat
Until 8 July, 11am-1pm, 2.30pm-7pm (except Sun, Mon),
galerie Berthet-Aittouarès,
14-29, rue de Seine, 6è, 0143265309. Free entry.
TTTT
Smoking isn't very good for your health, but it's excellent for painting. In his studio in Dormont, Eure, where he moved in 1961, artist Pierre Tal Coat rummaged through his stock and chose a fine wooden cigar box. He applied alternating layers of grey and then blue paint, in thick, rough layers. It looks like the bark of a tree, the relief of a rock. This tiny, magnificent painting is part of a major retrospective at the Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès devoted to Tal Coat, who was born Pierre Jacob in 1905 in Finistère and died in 1985. The exhibition recalls how the artist went from figurative painting, echoing the war (Massacre, 1936-1937), to gradually moving towards allusive painting, suggesting a few tree branches, with a colourful rhythm, the essence of nature (Le Rocher vert, 1960), and then on to his famous paintings on wood, in a reduced format, with a texture as lumpy as an orange peel. The ultimate works of an immense painter.
