"La fenêtre ouverte sur Vallauris" (1974) Printmaking by André Cottavoz

Born in 1922 in Saint-Marcellin, in Isère, André Cottavoz studied at the Lyon School of Fine Arts in 1939.

In 1942, Cottavoz at the age of 20, he is part of class 22 and must go to the Compulsory Labor Service. The STO earned him deportation to Austria with his comrade Philibert Charrin. Despite trying living conditions, they managed to paint on pieces of cardboard and even exhibit but the paintings were destroyed.

Liberated and his studies completed, he participated, from 1945, in several exhibitions . In 1953, he won the Fénéon prize.

In the meantime, an important movement emerged: the New figuration of the Lyon school, or 'sanzism'. Jean Fusaro, André Lauran, Jacques Truphémus and Paul Philibert-Charrin join André Cottavoz to express the trends, namely the search for a light that is less natural than springing from the very interior of the canvas, intention which for his part Cottavoz supports by the thickness of the “sensual paste which he accumulates in pastel and chalky tones […] being thereby figurative in the sense in which he starts from reality, abstract in the sense in which he reduced to its essence”: painting, for André Cottavoz, is truly sculpting his canvases (where monochromy is not uncommon) with a trowel, hence the nickname that was given to him of “Monticelli vert”.

In Vallauris where he settled permanently in 1962, André Cottavoz became interested in enameled ceramics which he worked with Roger Collet.

The works of André Cottavoz appear in numerous museums in France and abroad, and multiple exhibitions of his works have been organized in France and abroad starting in 1946

sanzism \sɑ̃.zism\ masculine

(Painting) Artistic movement born in Lyon defining itself as against all artistic movements in -ism. It completes a set of around twenty works, including four monumental ones, commissioned by the general council of the Rhône, all painted by Jean Fusaro (born in 1925), co-founder of Sanzism in 1948 with André Cottavoz and Jacques Truphémus.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1922
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists, Represented by a Gallery,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary French Artists Artists presented by a gallery