Artwork
Cottavoz Andree
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Andree Cottavoz (1922-2012)
André Cottavoz is a painter and lithographer who belonged to the Sanzistes group and Paris School. His figurative work is powerful and quasi-carnal, pouring forth a flamboyant radiance accentuated by the sheer thickness of his paint, literally sculpted with a knife.
André Cottavoz was born in Saint-Marcellin in Isère, the first child of the young Marguerite who was just 18 years old. He manifested his passion for painting from adolescence. His mother, who was a watercolorist, encouraged him in this path, bought him colors, and took him to paint with her in nature. He experimented with copying landscapes. The reproduction of a Vincent Van Gogh painting that he discovered in a shop window was a revelation. Back home, he borrowed a knife and started to paint, or rather sculpt the material, a practice that never left him. At the age of 18, he enrolled at the Beaux-Arts in Lyon to continue his apprenticeship. During his first year there, France plunged into the chaos of World War II. The young man was drafted into the French mandatory labor force (STO) in Austria. Working conditions were difficult, and life was hard. Everyone resisted as best they could. Painting saved André Cottavoz.
André Cottavoz and Sanzism
Strongly marked by his years of captivity, André Cottavoz found it challenging to adapt to his new life after the war.
Urged by his mother, he returned to Lyon and reintegrated the School of Fine Arts. In 1948, he organized the first exhibition of “Sanzists” at the Chapel of the Ampère High School in Lyon with his student friends, Jean Fusaro, Jacques Truphémus, Georges Adilon, and Philibert Charrin in particular,
Sanzists is a term by which the participants expressed their opposition to bear any label. “Sansisme”, neither impressionism, fauvism, nor cubism.