Robert Coutelas “I Seek the Small Golden Hand”

Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum

Robert COUTELAS,“Composition of My Nights 24-b”1973 Private collection (photo: Fumihito KATAMURA)

This event has ended.

Robert Coutelas (1930–1985) was an artist born in Paris, France. Promoted as “today’s Utrillo” or “the second Bernard Buffet,” he found working in the trend-dominated art world unpleasant. Instead, he chose to separate himself from galleries and paint in poverty. What this artist spent his life producing are works that, while humorous at first glance, are filled with a quiet melancholy; they include his cartes, his unique mythological images and abstract motifs on small scraps of paper, and his tranquil gouaches, filled with creatures somewhere between human beings and animals. What mattered to the artist, having trained and worked in his youth as a stonemason, was his yearning for the world of the medieval craftsman, the lives of the people and animals who inhabit the streets of Paris, and the folk art or, art populaire, that expressed the classic French spirit, art that had matured over the centuries, rather than the flashy fashions of the contemporary art world.

In 2015, the thirtieth year since his death, a movement to reevaluate Coutelas’s oeuvre has resulted in exhibitions in France and Japan. This exhibition shows various pieces, some of which are on display for the first time. It includes early oil paintings from his days in Lyon as well as images displaying how he produced the works.

Part I: Dec. 17 (Sat)–Jan. 29 (Sun)
Part II: Jan. 31 (Tues)–Mar. 12 (Sun)