BERTHET-AITTOUARES

During the year 2025, the City of Aix-en-Provence celebrates Paul Cezanne, father of modern art, through a series of events that bring his legacy back to life. The Bouches-du-Rhône Department is joining in this celebration by programming at the cultural space department 21, bis Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence an exhibition dedicated to the artist Pierre Jacob known as Tal Coat (1905-1985), one of the great figures of 20th century French painting.

 

Titled after a note from the painter himself, Tal Coat . The image is emergence, this project embraces the artist's entire career, from the first experiments of the 1920s-1930s around the human figure to the quasi-abstract research of the 1960s-1980s, through the 1940s-1950s during which Tal Coat took refuge in Aix-en-Provence, then settled until 1956 at the foot of the Sainte-Victoire mountain, at Chateau-Noir, Cézanne's studio when he painted at Tholonet.

 

The landscape and the portrait - in particular the self-portrait which recurs regularly throughout his career - hold a decisive place at the heart of a work which has never ceased to renew itself based on this notion of the emergence of figures, forms and signs on the surface or in the very thickness of the pictorial material.

 

This exhibition, which commemorates the 120th anniversary of the birth and the 40th anniversary of the death of Tal Coat, was designed from the exceptional collection of paintings and works on paper from the Berthet-Aittouarès gallery, a long-standing defender of the artist's work.

 

 

Marc Donnadieu

Exhibition curator, researcher and art critic