Robert Couturier
Free drawing
The first exhibition devoted to the graphic work of Robert Couturier since 1959. Bringing together nearly twenty works created between the 1930s and 1990s and accompanied by a catalogue, it highlights the vitality, inventiveness, and exacting standards of a medium to which the artist dedicated his entire life with tireless fervor.
Considered one of the leading sculptors of the post-war period alongside Richier and Giacometti, Robert Couturier (1905–2008) was also, and intrinsically so, an important draftsman. Far from being anecdotal, this dual practice reveals the unity of his creative thought: through both line and volume, he pursued throughout his life a single quest, that of “evoking as much humanity as possible with the most minimal means.”
Conceived as a small retrospective of his drawings, this exhibition spans the artist’s entire life, from his earliest drawings in the 1930s to the final works of this centenarian creator. Through the diversity of these drawings, the coherence of a gesture unfolds, a gesture that neither time nor age has been able to diminish.
From adolescence, Couturier imposed upon himself a daily discipline: never going to bed without having drawn. It is no coincidence that the artist first trained in lithography. Far more than an academic exercise, this practice stemmed from an inner necessity, an impulse he summarized with a personal neologism: “déprendre” (to detach). This term underscores his commitment to total freedom, making drawing a space for play, a pleasure for the eye, and a vibrant tension between the spoken and the unspoken.
The works presented here bear witness to the enduring nature of his recurring themes: the human figure—woman, man, child, couple—reinvented through a singular anatomical freedom. Like Ingres and his penchant for controlled distortion, Couturier stretches, distends, and opens up form to reach another reality.
Here, economy of means is a deliberate artistic choice, not a deficiency. Through the sheer tension of a contour or the joyful wandering of a line across the page, Couturier manages to breathe life into the inert.
“The unusual and the playful only work through his always unexpected artistic discoveries. Couturier awakens our gaze, rekindles what is most alive in each medium, drawing, sculpture. What magic in his linear asceticism! Poetry is the great victor.”
Lydia Harambourg
