COIGNARD James

James Coignard is a French painter, engraver, and sculptor, born on September 15, 1925 in Tours and died on March 7, 2008 in Mougins. It is through painting and drawing that James Coignard developed his aesthetic thinking. In the late 1960s, the artist particularly explored the possibilities offered by carborundum engraving. He was hard to classify, touching, experimenting, trying, and tirelessly seeking the mediums, forms, and techniques that allowed him to evolve his artistic research. At the beginning of his career, Coignard was associated with the realists of the School of Paris. Quickly, it became difficult to categorize his work within any of the artistic movements of the second half of the 20th century; but, looking at his body of work, it is clear that James Coignard fully belongs to his time. Marcelin Pleynet, in "James Coignard et la mémoire des signes," 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 when we try to compare it, to think about it, to understand it based on certain conventional data." This is its very essence. In 1948, James Coignard discovered the French Riviera and decided to attend the school of decorative arts in Nice. Initially, he was a ceramist. His meeting with Paul Hervieu, a 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 studio. He began exhibiting in the Scandinavian countries. He married Mireille Poupart; he returned to Beaulieu-sur-Mer in 1956, where he set up his studio. At that time, Atlan, Christine Boumeester, Henri Goetz, Max Papart would gather there. In 1958, Coignard stopped practicing ceramics to focus on painting. In the 1960s, his career took on an international dimension, particularly in the United States and Sweden. He traveled the world and experimented with new techniques such as tapestry and glass sculpture. In 1968, with Henri Goetz, Coignard created his first carborundum engravings; a process he would explore in its many possibilities and facets until the end of his life. From 1969, he became interested in publishing issues and worked on his first artist books. Coignard married Sylvia Uryn in 1984. Between 1985 and 1990, he lived in the United States, then settled permanently in Antibes; the artist tirelessly worked on his painted and engraved works there.