Robert Coutelas: I Seek the Small Gloden Hand

It is hard not to be moved by the raw, poignant images crafted by outsider artist Robert Coutelas (Paris, 19301985). Though trained as a stonemason and painter, Coutelas quickly rejected the art world of the 1960s, electing to live and work in poverty. He painted in gouache and oils on discarded pieces of cardboard and created ceramic works from clay collected in the city and fired in his potbelly stove. This detailed monograph presents over 160 images plus three insightful essays capturing the mans artistic process and yearning for the life of the medieval craftsman and art populaire of the streets of Paris. His whimsical, humorous and sometimes melancholy works flow from literal to mythical in paintings such as My Ancestors, suggesting medieval religious paintings and his cartes, a kind of tarot deck of signs and mystical references. Only after his death was Coutelas discovered, first among academics, then within the inner art worlds of Paris and Japan and last the US, where his work is found in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.