COUTAUD, Lucien (1904–1977) - Lot 71

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COUTAUD, Lucien (1904–1977) - Lot 71
COUTAUD, Lucien (1904–1977) "Dormeuse des eaux," ink and wash, signed and dated 1973 in the lower left corner, 45 x 54 cm. Note: Lucien Coutaud was a French painter, born on December 13, 1904, in Meynes, Gard, and died in Paris on June 21, 1977. Lucien Coutaud was born on December 13, 1904, in Meynes, a small town in the Gard department, located between Nîmes and Beaucaire. From an early age, Coutaud displayed a restless, secretive, and anxious disposition; he was different from his peers and aware of his difference. Coutaud was a man who was at once tormented, self-conscious, and generous. Upon finishing 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 humorous drawings, 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 academies. 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, while he was completing his military service that same year. In 1931, upon his return to Paris, he befriended 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 developed an interest in tapestry beginning in 1935. During World War II, he expanded this activity and devoted himself to painting. In 1941, he created the sets, props, and costumes for André Obey’s *800 mètres*, starring Jean-Louis Barrault, which was performed at the Roland Garros Stadium. He designed the sets for Paul Claudel’s *The Satin Shoe* for Barrault at 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 *Medea*, starring Maria Callas and directed by André Barsacq, at the Maggio Musicale in Florence. His figurative style, evolving toward dreamlike abstraction, is close to a form of surrealism characterized by southern themes and colors: 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), a form of painting centered on a world, on an individual constantly undergoing metamorphosis, yet always sexual, as seen in the impressive series *Taureaumagies*, composed of intertwined bodies, or that of the *Swan Characters*; a world that feels compelled to merge—though not always successfully, and at the risk of losing itself—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.
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