Carole Pinto Fine Arts

Cottavoz was trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyons, and his precocious genius was recognized early on and rewarded by numerous exhibitions around the world  including the Galerie Tamenaga in Tokyo and Paris, the Galerie Longchamps in Nice.  He was also the recipient of many prestigious rewards.

His work is characterized by the use of heavy impastos and a palette knife which adds texture and depth to his compositions. His seemingly chaotic brushstrokes create expressive pictorial surfaces that transform mundane subject matter into paintings that excite and provoke the eye.  Cottavoz was obsessed with ‘finding the light within his canvases’, and though he slowly drifted towards abstraction in his later compositions, he never completely abandoned representational art.

The raw quality and dense texture of the art of Chaim Soutine had a profound influence on Cottavoz,  and impacted the entire school of American Abstract Expressionists in its search for expressive visual impact.   Cottavoz formerly belonged to the Lyon School of New Figuration, but never pledged allegiance to any particular style.