« Do you know the Drôme? We should travel through it. Perhaps one day, illustrating du Bouchet, we will be able in its massifs, its rocks, forests and waters, to find the equivalence of this writing by him. (…)
Beautiful dark purple fields against the sky, rocking, pristine land. The Drôme! »
Pierre Tal Coat, Letter to Françoise Simecek, 13.05.1972

Among the poets of the 20th century, André du Bouchet (1924-2001) is an inventor, a creator of forms like Stéphane Mallarmé was in the previous century. On the page, between his words, space plays an essential role. The white, the air make the poems breathe and it sometimes takes long strides to pass from one fragment to another.

André du Bouchet, had met Pierre Tal Coat in 1948, when the painter lived in Château Noir, in the hills of Aix-en-Provence. Until the disappearance of his friend, but also until his own disappearance (until his very last days in April 2001, at the hospital in Crest), he never stopped questioning himself (and write) on the unique adventure of « this great painter ».

Remember that André du Bouchet affixed his (typed) pages to the walls of the room where he worked, in Paris or in Truinas: he had, so to speak, a studio (or rather two). And, to tell the truth, a vast construction site. « I’m a painter! » he said, smiling to his loved ones…

In his huge studio in Dormont (not far from Giverny), Pierre Tal Coat (1905-1985) sought to find an organic harmony between painting and nature, between the material of his paint and the surrounding world: hundreds of paintings lived there, waiting… just like hundreds of pages of André du Bouchet waiting for the rapidity of a glance, the flash of a seizure until the « precipitate » of the poem.

The exhibition, through paintings, drawings, books…, explores the links between the poet and the painter.

Curator: Jean-Pascal Léger.

Pierre Tal Coat. Vertigo. Oil on canvas. Valence Museum. 1982. Photograph Eric Caillet.

Pierre Tal Coat’s studio. Photograph by Michel Dieuzaide. Towards the Curvature. 1983

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