“How do you expect me to talk about my relationship with nature when I’m in it!1” cried Pierre Tal Coat.

For its fifth exhibition of Pierre Tal Coat’s work, Galerie Christophe Gaillard has chosen to present a remarkable collection of paper artwork and small paintings from the period 1970–1980. Taken from the artist’s workshop and mostly unseen by the public, they demonstrate how Tal Coat endeavored to replicate the deep relationship between people and nature through his art.

A keen walker, Tal Coat would often dash off quick sketches in his notebooks, or work on his watercolours while reclining against an embankment or sitting in the grass, painting on the paper that he called his “notes” on the landscape. He sought to capture the changing movements of the light, space and air around him, and express their sensitivity.

The way we look at things, or the typical way in which we consider them, has become more intellectual but less sensitive. And yet, it takes effort to embody the true meaning of the word sensitivity. Sensitivity is what I can express in the world with the world. What I can express as the world. This is why I paint and this is what I believe painting to be2.

Pierre Tal Coat’s words take on a new, highly contemporary meaning when viewed through the lens of green thinking. “Tal Coat’s paintings live through the life they reap, influence and perpetuate3” wrote the philosopher and critic Guillaume Logé. He continued :

“Anti-modern, Tal Coat asked questions of people: their positioning, their role and the desirable extent of their actions. He sought to make art while ceding to nature. In contrast stood Picasso, paragon of triumphant Modernity, creator at the centre of it all, assuming rights and unlimited powers. The Earth was his. Letting his imagination take the lead, and following his whims, he contorted it in all the right ways. A quasi-deity, his genius went beyond the impossible, promising the absolute to humankind. Henri Maldiney was accurate in his analysis: “Picasso stands before the world as the fiercest of adversaries: he that loves and hates.” Tal Coat stood against this, urging a new meaning for the story. He understood that we must embrace and not impose. Call for laissez-faire. Art must recognize this or embody it in its own way.

Tal Coat: an anti-modern environmentalist (in)formed by nature. He walks – no – becomes part of the landscape. He merges with it. Certain excerpts from Michel Dieuzaide’s Tal Coat film are expressive – “barely” so – to echo the artist’s words following a screening. Towards the end of the 14th minute, the camera shows a wide shot of a chalk quarry. Tal Coat appears on the right of the image as though he had added emphasis with a pencil on the page of a notebook. On the screen, we see the silhouette of his two white initials on the paintings from the Carrières (Quarries) series (1980–84). The camera zooms out. He now sits on a mound of earth at the foot of a cliff. It is difficult to tell where he ends and the greenery begins. The images are truthful: Tal Coat identifies with nature. This is one of the key characteristics of the philosophy embodied by his art4.

Notes

1 Quoted by Jean-Pascal Léger, Tal Coat. Pierre et front de bois, Paris, Somogy, 2017, p. 85.
2 Pierre Tal Coat, Conversation avec Eddy Devolder, Gerpinnes, Éditions Tandem, 1991, p. 32.
3 Guillaume Logé, Nature sensible. En marchant avec Tal Coat, Lannion, Sombres Torrents; Paris, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, 2025, p. 38.
4 Guillaume Logé, op. cit, p. 66-68.