La Galerie Cotignac Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Contemporary abstract expressionist pastel on paper of a Provençal landscape 'Cancan b' by Dutch artist Bernadette Van Baarsen. Signed an...

Contemporary abstract expressionist pastel of a Provençal landscape ' Chemin Privé b.' by Dutch artist Bernadette Van Baarsen. Signed and...

Contemporary expressionist pastel on paper of a Provençal landscape titled 'Cancan a' by Dutch artist Bernadette Van Baarsen. Signed and dated to the bottom right and presented in wo...

Contemporary abstract expressionist drawing in pastel of a Provençal landscape by Dutch artist Bernadette Van Baarsen. Signed and dated to the bottom right and presented in a black c...

Contemporary abstract expressionist fauvist pastel on paper of a Provençal landscape by Dutch artist Bernadette Van Baarsen. Signed and dated to the bottom left and presented in a pl...

Modern abstract pastel on paper, the work is signed to the back of the paper, Djoklevic. A bright and colourful abstract pastel in the style of Alexander Calder. It could be an inte...

1970s fauvist watercolour of a forest glade by Belgian artist André Pierard. Not signed but acquired from his estate along with others of his works. A be...

Mid Century Swedish drawing of two men in conversation by Birger Lindberg. The work is signed and dated top left.. presented in plain wood frame with card mount. A charming view of ...

1980s abstract expressionist biomorphic coloured pencil drawing on paper by Belgian artist André Pierret, signed bottom right. André Pierret was born ...

Mid-century lyrical surrealist abstract watercolour on paper by French artist Jean Clerté, signed and dated bottom right. Presented in mid-century frame. Jean Clerté , born in 1930 in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienne, is a French painter, engraver, draftsman, watercolourist and sculptor . This work is a great example of his more humorous and expressive work influenced by Alechinsky from the late 1960s onwards. There is a light playfulness and yet the watercolours are more vivid than his previous palette. Jean Clerté works in series. His sequential narrations testify both to a youthful spontaneity and to a perfect mastery in the distribution of forms and images on the painted surface. The narration is not only an accumulation of juxtaposed fragments and symbols, it forms a whole, it takes on and gives meaning. In general, we can say of Clerté that he practices an “eco-art” that feeds on primary hungers: the feeling of being united with nature, the vegetable, the mineral, the aquatic. In his colourful canvases, his inks, his boxes, his objects, like a shaman on the path of his dreams, the painter Clerté mounts an assault on beasts and demons, elves and gnomes. From the Poitevin marshes to the tropical forests emerges a fauna caught in the meanders of a design that marvels at the appearance of these grotesque idols. Jean Clerté began to draw and paint at a very young age, and at the age of 15 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers. Then in 1949, curious about the capital, he moved to Paris. Having very few financial resources, he could not continue his studies at first, worked as a model to survive, and met other artists; he was then admitted to the studio of Ossip Zadkine and, from 1952, he was also able to study engraving at Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter, an English engraver and printer living in Paris associated in the 1930s with surrealism. At the end of the 1960s, he worked alongside Pierre Alechinsky, founding member of the Cobra movement, engraving Alechinsky's originals, benefiting from his advice, and discovering acrylic as a medium. From 1976, Jean Clerté became associate professor at Hayter. Clerté had taught previously, in 1971 at the Salzburg Summer University and in 1972 he gave courses at the Paris-Sorbonne University . In 1981, he was appointed professor at the School of Decorative Arts , where he had Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas as a student and, from 1983 to 1988, he was Alechinsky's assistant professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts. His first works are part of the current of lyrical abstraction, and are nourished by impressions of nature (landscape motifs, e.g. forest fires, waterscapes), then around 1968, encouraged by Alechinsky, he rejects abstraction, and his work becomes more figurative with expressive and humorous elements. From this period his colours are more subdued, often with pastel tones, he works on series. Jean Clerté has created a world in a space where drawing, painting, objects participate in a playful figuration. From his drawings were born sculptures and sometimes mobiles (Le Moulin à dessin). If it is the artist who makes astonishing, polychrome, whimsical “toys”, it is the painter who appeals to adults through his caustic and satirical humour. His first exhibitions in France took place at the Galerie Massol , then at the Galerie Pascal...

Abstract expressionist, pastel on black paper by English artist John McQuirk. Signed bottom right. McQuirk's work is an example of outsider art or art brut. Born in 1933, the arti...

Abstract expressionist CoBrA style chalk on paper of a human figure attributed to French artist, A Nuchy. The work is unsigned but was acquired along with ...

Abstract expressionist CoBrA style chalk on paper of an imaginary bird by French artist, A Nuchy. Signed to the bottom right. Highly colourful and inventi...

Contemporary mixed media and pastel on paper of a golden sun like orb by Belgian artist Francis Besson, signed bottom right. In plain contemporary oak f...

Late 19th century drawing and crayon view of a sunset over the Alps by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. Initial signed (HBB) by the artist. Brabazon would have vi...

Mid 19th century pastel drawing view of Bellagio on Lake Como by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. The work is under its original mount and initial signed (HBB) b...

Mid 19th century pastel drawing view of the Chapel Bridge and river Reuss in Lucerne, Switzerland by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. The work...