Pierre Tal Coat was born Pierre Jacob, the son of a deep-sea fisherman, on 12 December 1905 at Clohars-Carnoët in the Finistère department of Brittany.
In 1915, after his father’s death on the front, he became in turn an apprentice blacksmith, a notary’s clerk and a ceramics moulder and painter at the Henriot pottery factory in Quimper. He drew figures and landscapes he observed in the Breton countryside and began frequenting artists in Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu.
In 1924, Tal Coat moved to Paris, where he became a model at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière art school and a moulder at the Manufacture de Sèvres porcelain factory. Soon after his arrival he met Auguste Fabre and Henri Bénézit and exhibited in their gallery. A financial crisis would send him back for long stays in Brittany during which he spent time exploring megalithic sites with his friends Emile Compard, Henri Bénézit and the couturier Paul Poiret. In Paris he made friends with Francis Gruber, André Marchand, Léo and Gertrude Stein, Francis Picabia, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Ernest Hemingway, Balthus, Antonin Artaud, Tristan Tzara and Paul-Émile Victor. He developed an interest in Romanesque art and the Fayum portraits.
In 1936, Tal Coat travelled to Provence and met Picasso. He painted several portraits (including one of Alberto Giacometti), and, stirred by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, completed the Massacres series. In 1938 he exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He was conscripted and mobilised in 1939 then demobilised in 1940, after which he took refuge in Aix-en- Provence along with several other artists, including André Marchand, Charles-Albert Cingria and Blaise Cendrars. There he met his companion, Xavière Angeli, whom he would marry in 1951. In 1941, he was included in an exhibition entitled “Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française” [Twenty young painters of the French tradition] organised by Jean Bazaine at the Galerie Braun in Paris. Tal Coat took up residence in the Château Noir at the foot of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, formerly Cézanne’s studio while he painted Tholonet, where he made the acquaintance of André Masson and, most importantly, the philosopher Henri Maldiney and the poet André du Bouchet who would become his close friends. His painting became non-figurative. In 1942 his daughter Pierrette was born. By 1943 Tal Coat had begun exhibiting at the Galerie de France. In 1947 he took part in the exhibition “Painting in France 1939-1946” at the Whitney Museum in New York, where his paintings, alongside those of Dubuffet, Fautrier and Hartung, caught the attention of Clement Greenberg.
In 1950, his solo exhibition at the Galerie de France unsettled viewers with its ostensible absence of motif. In 1954 he joined the Galerie Maeght where each of his exhibitions was accompanied by the publication of a catalogue-magazine called Derrière Le Miroir. A keen walker, Tal Coat enjoyed hiking in the Savoie and Dauphiné regions. He explored Dordogne, visited Lascaux and Les Eyzies, and painted Passants, Sauts and Course. In 1955 he took part in the Kassel documenta I. In 1956, sixteen paintings of his were shown in the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The following year he exhibited at the Kunsthalle
Bern. He travelled around Spain with his friend Eduardo Chilida, admiring Velasquez and Zurbaran at the Prado (1958), then went hiking in the Alps with Henri Maldiney, in the forest of Fontainebleau and the Vexin with André du Bouchet. His Veines de silex, Troupeaux and Vols d’oiseaux would come out of this period.
In 1959 he had a collector’s book, Sur le pas (fifteen aquatints, with poems by André du Bouchet), published by Maeght, and participated once again in the Kassel documenta (II). In 1960, Tal Coat acquired La Chartreuse de Dormont (Saint- Pierre-de Bailleul) near Vernon in Normandy, where he set up an immense studio; another major transformation in his work took place. He created a mosaic for the entrance wall of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence (1963) and painted the series Signes dans une falaise, Déesses-mères and Ronds de sorcières that were hung at the Galerie Maeght (1965). He returned to Brittany, to the landmarks of his childhood, and travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium (1966). The Colzas became one of the major themes of his painting. In the spring of 1968, he exhibited in three Parisian galleries: Bénézit, Beno d’Incelli and Schoeller, and took part in the travelling exhibition “Painting in France, 1900 – 1967” in the US (New-York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco). He was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts. After the death of his wife Xavière in 1970, he travelled to Corsica where for many weeks he did not paint. He exhibited in Geneva at the Benador gallery, which regularly featured his work. Jacques Benador published a book of his aquatints, Almanach de Tal-Coat, in 1971. In 1969, Françoise Simecek began publishing prints that he drew and etched, as well as books of collaborations with André du Bouchet Laisses (1975) and Sous le linteau en forme de joug (1978), two masterpieces of the illustrated book. In 1973 she began regularly showing his work at the Galerie L’Entracte in Lausanne. A collection of his etchings and lithographs appears in a catalogue raisonné published with funding from the Morbihan department at the Centre Tal Coat at Kerguéhennec (2017).
In 1974 a retrospective of his work was held in Metz, and in 1975 for the first time in Japan, at the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo. Tal Coat attended the opening of the exhibition but suffered from arteritis, and a serious operation on his foot impacted his mobility: temporarily unable to paint, he focussed on drawing, incessantly. In 1976, a major retrospective conceived of by André du Bouchet and Blaise Gautier appeared at the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1979, the Château de Ratilly inaugurated the exhibition “André du Bouchet – Pierre Tal-Coat”. From 1981 the Galerie Clivages in Paris, directed by Jean-Pascal Léger, regularly presented the work of Pierre Tal Coat, with over a dozen solo exhibitions.
In 1985, Dore Ashton curated “Tal- Coat, Sustained Visions”, an exhibition of paintings and wash drawings, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and André Cariou organised a retrospectiveof his work at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quimper.Pierre Tal Coat died on 11 June 1985 at La Chartreuse de Dormont, surrounded by his loved ones. In 1994, his work was shown at the 22nd São Paulo Art Biennal in Brazil. In 2006, a fire at La Chartreuse destroyed a thousand paintings and drawings. The Centre Pierre Tal Coat was founded in 2010 at the Domaine de Kerguéhennec in the Morbihan. The association Les Amis de Pierre Tal Coat lent its support in 2016 for the publication of the catalogue raisonné of his paintings, compiled by Xavier Demolon, the artist’s grandson. Since then, exhibitions of his work have been more and more frequent and numerous: among them are the major retrospective “Tal Coat, La liberté farouche de peindre, 1925-1985” organised by Jean-Pascal Léger at the Musée Granet in Aixen- Provence in 2017, and the exhibition “Tal Coat 1905-1985 - En devenir” at the Musée de Pont Aven, which runs until 10 June 2019. On June 30, 2019, opening of the permanent collection of the Tal Coat Center at the Château du Domaine de Kerguéhennec in a pedagogical programm presenting the artist life, his work evolution and its artistic and cultural context.