Robert Courtright
First retrospective exhibition of the American artist Robert Courtright (1926-2012) in Paris. After showing his works on numerous occasions during group shows and trade fairs for more than thirty years, KREO unveils a set of previously unpublished works bringing together collages and masks, dating from the 1960s until his death in 2012.
Born in 1926 in South Carolina, Robert Courtright is an autodidact. Close to the artistic approaches of Arte Povera, for more than five decades he developed a singular body of work, today appearing to have great aesthetic contemporaneity. His work spans more than five decades, between his workshops in New York and Opio.
The apparent simplicity of his works actually reveals an incomparable world, at once sophisticated, clever, reduced to the essential: grids made up of well-ordered rectangles of glued paper. These frames, these constructions, are the framework for expressing a color palette ranging from blood red to sunny yellow. Vibrant, saturated or pale, the colors play on the irregular surfaces of the glued papers, meticulously cut and rearranged.
Courtright’s attachment to geometry is nourished by a particular attention paid to architecture. Since a founding trip to Rome in 1952, the surfaces, the facades, flat but with infinite variations and roughness gleaned from Italian buildings and the south of France, have occupied his mind. The first collages, depicting architectural structures, bear witness to this fundamental attraction.
Very quickly, the figurative motifs fade and then disappear, giving way to simple orthogonal cutouts. New materials are used in its constructions with the introduction of corrugated cardboard, gauze strips or plaster. His decisive meeting with the Italian sculptor Bruno Romeda will give rise to an intense artistic bond. It was through his contact that he learned about metalwork.
A whole system of masks then developed. Essentially made of bronze and papier maché, these are directly inspired by the Bocca de la Verità (17th century) by Lucas van Leyden in Rome. Mostly circular in shape, Courtright plays around the same theme, like his collage work, multiplying variations of textures and colors.
With the language of the purest abstraction, exceptional in its rigor and its attachment to a clearly defined project, each work of Robert Courtright opens – in the words of Philip Jodidio – “a mental landscape formed by the centuries and today hui can be found”.