Robert Coutelas: In Search of Small Gods

Pale Horse is pleased to present an exhibition of French artist Robert Coutelas (1930–1985). In Search of Small Gods is the first exhibition of Coutelas’ work in the UK and marks the inaugural presentation of Pale Horse. 

The exhibition features more than 100 paintings from a single series that occupied Coutelas from 1967 until his death in 1985. Coutelas’ art was shaped by the deep, unrelenting poverty that accompanied him throughout his life. Unable to afford conventional art materials, these works are composed on pieces of found cardboard. Each night, Coutelas would wander the streets of Paris foraging for discarded boxes to use. Back in the solitude of a single room on the outskirts of the city, the artist would work through the night until the early hours; these pieces offer a momentary glimpse into the enigmatic world that populated his reclusive nights of creation. Coutelas coined this series, Mes nuits (‘My Nights’). 

For Mes nuits, Coutelas cut the found cardboard into much smaller formats, reminiscent of tarot cards. Never identical, the pieces measure around twelve by six centimetres. On these small panels, Coutelas deftly explores his complex and far-reaching index of references, inviting us into his dark, mischievous and psychological inner-world. Existing outside of time, within the Mes nuits series Coutelas at once refers to legends, myths, theatre, the history of art, and biblical anecdotes. Indecipherable calligraphy resembling old letters adorn select panels, whilst a select few boldly declare their exact time and place of making. The cartes simultaneously become a vehicle for expressing Coutelas’ deeply personal obsessions, like the woman with the long hair whom he loved but lost. Imagery turns to motifs as themes and subjects are consistently reconfigured and revisited; in this instance, the hair itself becomes its own spiralling motif, as figuration seamlessly moves into abstraction. Coutelas’ abstract cartes are equally adept and form a significant portion of the series. These works illustrate the artist’s rigorous and innovative exploration of space, depth, composition and colour, all within the tight parameters of twelve by six centimetres. 

Before painting, Coutelas prepared his found cardboard in a method mirroring 16th-century techniques. He would apply thin coats of glue to the surface, drying and polishing each individual layer, subsequently scraping or heating it with an iron to give an impression of aged wooden panel paintings. After this time-consuming process, he would let the cartes rest before returning to them and completing them. This gave each work the patina of time, which for Coutelas was akin to the artworks being coloured by life. For him, “the artist” was equivalent to the anonymous medieval craftsman who brought mystical beings and legends to life. A deep childhood fascination with Romanesque churches had led Coutelas to train as a stonemason. Whilst the austere, commercial realities of modern stonemasonry thwarted his ideals, resulting in him abandoning the craft, the grotesque, magical, characterful world of medieval France continued to inhabit the dark recesses of his imagination. In these tiny paintings, we bear witness to his deep yearning for the bygone world of medieval France. Small enough to fit in the palm of the artist’s hand, any suggestions for the cartes enlargement were met with staunch opposition from Coutelas, who felt their small scale was essential to their being. 

These cartes represent a private act of resistance. Deliberately shunning commercial success and walking away from lucrative gallery opportunities and commissions, the artist chose a life of destitution so as to create as he wished, free from constraints. He was a figure intimate with suffering and hardship: as a child, he spent three years in a German labour camp during the war, and later, as a teenager, attempted suicide twice. Living estranged from his family, who disapproved of his artistic ambitions, Coutelas relied upon the generosity of friends for living quarters, which changed frequently.

It was in 1967 that Coutelas moved to 226 Rue de Vaugirard, an address where he would remain for the rest of his life. The building, known as L’Auberge du Soleil d’Or (‘The Inn of the Golden Sun’) is where he would begin his Mes nuits series. The address is emblazoned on select cartes, sometimes accompanied by the artist’s signature or initials, and sometimes on its own, becoming a signifier or marker in its own right. The building’s courtyard, colloquially referred to by police as the ‘Alley of Miracles’, housed a cast of characters who existed on the margins of society; undocumented foreigners, the homeless and those forgotten. Late into the night, a cacophony of screams and howls, laughter and whispers would infiltrate Coutelas’ small room where he worked. Violent and destitute, the inhabitants sought joy in the bleakness of the everyday with instinctive humour. Coutelas himself, was a figure who laughed in the face of adversity, playful and mischievous these cartes resemble flashes of light and laughter despite the suffering he endured. It was under the veil of the cacophonic nights at 226 rue de Vaugiraud that his inner-world could emerge and take form.

In 1977, Coutelas was given several hundred discarded posters by a friend working at a printing factory. On the backs of these defective posters, he began Mes ancêtres (‘My Ancestors’), a series of imagined portraits, two of which feature in the exhibition. Drawing on the visual tropes of Renaissance portraiture, these striking, often bird-like figures emulate the formal poses of French aristocracy. In Coutelas’ hand, these fantastical portraits express a fictitious lineage, one that included animals and all beings.

The exhibition takes its title from a collection of poems by Jim Harrison published under the title, ‘In Search of Small Gods.’ With searing immediacy, Harrison contemplated life’s brevity, uncovering with a wicked humour how anonymous gods exist within the intangible, fortuitous moments that cross our paths daily. In his nocturnal walks through Paris, Coutelas would search for the mystère lurking within the shadows. One night after walking the streets of the city, Coutelas recalled seeing sparrows playing in pools of water during a brief clearing. Both Harrison and Coutelas delved into the poetics of the real and the imagined and lived in a world where humans, birds, fish, mice and dogs all co-existed on the same plane, conversing and intertwining with no hierarchy. The instinctual drives of love and death steered both figures. Coutelas would say, laughing mischievously, that he could form an opinion about someone just by listening to him pronounce the word love; "Painting is for me," he confided, "an inner adventure, a great love, an ‘amour’ with a capital ‘A’.”

This exhibition marks the inaugural presentation by Pale Horse, a gallery dedicated to both contemporary artists and historical rediscovery. Often showing artists in the UK for the first time, Pale Horse will place artists working today alongside overlooked estates and outsider figures. Following the presentation at The Fitzrovia Chapel, In Search of Small Gods will continue at Pale Horse, 51 Great Portland Street.

Robert Coutelas (1930, Paris, France–1985, Paris, France) lived and worked in Paris. Recent exhibitions include Jean Dubuffet / Robert Coutelas: The Joy of Innocence at Musée Réattu, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arles, Arles, France (2024); Colours that Enfold the Night at Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan (2015); I Seek the Small Golden Hand at Musée Bernard Buffet, Nagaizumi-cho, Shizuoka, Japan and Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art, Oyamazaki, Kyoto, Japan (2016–17). His works are held in notable collections including the Fondation Jeanne Matossian, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, and the Musée des Arts Naïfs et Populaires de Noyers.

Pale Horse would like to express their sincere and heartfelt thanks to Mariko Kishi Molia, Stéphane Corréard, Hervé Loevenbruck, Jules Vannier and Nicolas Nivelet for their generosity and continued support throughout this project and without whom this exhibition would not have been possible.

Exhibition generously supported by Affinius Capital & Mountpark.