James Coignard - 1925-2008 - Oil On Paper - Abstaction - Modern Art -

OIL ON PAPER SIGNED "J. COIGNARD" FOR JAMES COIGNARD REPRESENTING AN ABSTACTION - DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST'S FAMILY - ORIGINAL SET - James Coignard is a French painter, engraver and sculptor, born September 15, 1925 in Tours and died on March 7, 2008 in Mougins1. It is through painting and drawing that James Coignard will develop his aesthetic thought. At the end of the 1960s, the artist will more particularly exploit the possibilities offered by carborundum engraving. He is unclassifiable, he touches, experiments, tries, and tirelessly seeks the supports, forms and techniques that allow him to develop his artistic research. At the start of his career, Coignard was assimilated to the realists of the School of Paris. Very quickly, it becomes difficult to stop working in one of the artistic movements of this second half of the twentieth century; but, in view of his work, it is clear that James Coignard belongs fully to his time. Marcelin Pleynet, in James Coignard and the memory of signs2, writes: “the work of James Coignard presents all the characteristics of a work belonging to the space of modern art […] the work of James Coignard seems curiously silent as soon as we try to compare it, to think about it, to understand it according to such or such conventional data. This is its very essence. In 1948, James Coignard discovered the French Riviera and decided to take courses at the School of Decorative Arts in Nice. He then also received advice from Louis Marchand des Raux, to whom he was close. In his early days, he was a ceramicist. His meeting with Paul Hervieu, gallery owner in Nice in 1950, was decisive for his career. Coignard exhibited for the first time in Beaulieu-sur-Mer and it was through Paul Hervieu that he met Braque, Matisse and Chagall. In 1952, he moved to Paris and set up his ceramic workshop. He begins to exhibit in the Scandinavian countries. He marries Mireille Poupart; he returned to Beaulieu-sur-mer in 1956, where he set up his workshop. At that time there were Atlan, Christine Boumeester, Henri Goetz, Max Papart… In 1958, Coignard stopped practicing ceramics to devote himself to painting. In the 1960s, his career took on an international dimension, particularly in the United States and Sweden. He then travels around the world and tries out new techniques such as tapestry and glass sculpture. In 1968, with Henri Goetz, Coignard made his first carborundum engravings; a process of which he will explore the multiple possibilities and facets until the end of his life. From 1969, he became interested in publishing issues and worked on his first artists' books. Coignard married Sylvia Uryn in 1984. Between 1985 and 1990, he moved to the United States, then settled permanently in Antibes; the artist works there tirelessly on his painted and engraved works. In 1992, a retrospective exhibition of Théo Tobiasse's work was organized at the castle-museum of Cagnes-sur-Mer. A real meeting place for artists, he finds there in particular the writer Chaïm Potok and his plastic artist friends Ben and Arman.