French Expressionist Abstract Original Painting Artists Studio Provenance

Abstract Expressionist Composition
by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011)
gouache painting on thick board
unframed: 8 x 8 inches
condition: excellent
provenance: all the paintings we have for sale by this artist have come from the artists studio and are all featured in the artists Catalogue Raisonne.

Jacques, Paul, Firmin Coulais is a French painter born on March 22 , 1955 in Fenioux ( Deux-Sèvres ) and died at the age of 56, the June 25 , 2011 in Niort (Deux-Sèvres). Born into a farming family, he was the seventh of eight children.

Suddenly becoming a quadriplegic at the age of six following poliomyelitis, he overcame this handicap by building with determination an independent life centered on artistic practice and an intense social life. For more than thirty years his house and his workshop have been the center of attraction for many artists, art lovers or simply friends of Niort and all of France.

Coulais began to paint with his mouth, as an autodidact. In 1978, he made the acquaintance of a plastic art teacher who advised him and engaged him on the path of watercolour. The freedom granted to him by this technique as well as the flexibility of its application fascinate him. This meeting and the friendship shared with his teacher, lead him and very quickly direct his work from figurative to abstraction in a way that he explores and that he will then find in the works of Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

Admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Angoulême, he studied there from 1981 to 1984 and obtained the National Superior Diploma in Plastic Expression at the age of 31. A few years later, Jacques Coulais exhibited at the Museum of Niort and since then, his career has been punctuated by his participation in numerous exhibitions organized very regularly in various French cities as well as abroad.

In the 1990s, the AAPBP, Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, opened its doors to him. It gives artists the opportunity to support themselves and devote themselves to their art, free from worries and concerns.

Jacques Coulais becomes a scholarship holder of the Association. Two years later, he obtained the status of associate member. He has been a full member since 1998. This remarkable association organizes numerous artistic events every year. The painting of Jacques Coulais is most often abstract painting nourished by his training, his extensive and precise culture and the dreams, or more frequently nightmares, which populated his nights and whose memory he has preserved through four notebooks that he wrote himself. His painting is done either with his mouth or directly on the ground with the wheels of his chair.

He had a very thick paper or a canvas, usually square, installed at his table, the brushes, the colors. Anyone present could prepare their colours. He gave extremely precise instructions in everything and got exactly the shade he was looking for. They handed him the brush he was holding with his mouth. For large formats, the brush was attached to a rod that could reach a meter in length.

Mastering a very elaborate watercolor technique, he produces his works with his mouth with relentless meticulousness: a “pensive” painting made of “repetitive and patient gestures” which “are a matter of working on oneself ” . This painting refers either to the mandala – a multitude of stains and colors cover the surface and give it its rhythm and its light – or to the calligraphic painting, a singular writing, devoid of meaning whose main driving force is the unconscious, an abstract writing that only expresses its own aesthetics. “It is only a question of one thing, namely, the fundamental impossibility of describing, of writing a representation of the world. Perhaps it is only an attempt at poetic gesture!… For someone whose body has abandoned, gesture is vital.

Bibliography

Catalog of the exhibition at the Musée du Donjon , Niort, 1991.
In absentia , text by Ami Barak, works by Jacques Coulais, ACAPA Éditeur, 1992.
Of the sign, of the interpretation, of the incompleteness : interview with Paul Ardenne and Jacques Coulais, Revue La Licorne no 23 , 1992.
Art, the Contemporary Age , Paul Ardenne, Editions du Regard, 1997.
A small grammar of signs , Jacques Coulais, Cultural Action of the University of Poitiers, 2002.
Portfolio of 18 watercolours, text by Dominique Moncond’huy, 2003.
Paintings Please, Pay Attention, Please , Barbara Polla & Paul Ardenne, Editions Le Bord de l’Eau – La Muette collection, 2010.
Jacques Coulais Pictor Maximus, Body & Canvas . texts by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, interview with Ali kazma, Éditions TAKE FIVE – Trait d’Union collection, 2011.
Continuum , texts by Jacques Coulais and Régis Busschaërt, Éditions Le Courtil des Roses, 2011.