Ingert exhibits Georges Koskas. Works on paper from Jean Cherqui Collection

Georges Koskas (1926-2013) is an unclassifiable painter, who even worked throughout his life to be so, rejecting classifications and disassociating himself from schools to only follow his own most personal path, made up of explorations, reversals and sideways steps. Holding onto his independence and freedom more than anything else, he has changed style and directions many times, which has no doubt contributed to a certain reluctance on the part of critics, disconcerted by these breaks in continuity that prevent any clear categorisation. Still, his work is one of the most bold and harmonious expressions of French geometric abstraction. Just arrived in Paris after leaving Tunisia, Georges Koskas studied in André Lhote’s atelier, and later in Fernand Léger’s. This rigorous formation makes him particularly sensitive to the question of composition, which remains a central theme in his painting. 

From the very beginning, his concern with composition went beyond the pure harmony of form and space to an ontological, even, in the words of writer Mustapha Chelbi, “cosmic” level. What manifested within him at that moment was indeed what he called a “need to understand the deep links between beings, objects and nature, going beyond the appearances of a figurative narrative”. Claiming the primacy of sensitivity and inspiration, Koskas traced his path in complete freedom, always choosing the direction towards which his joy and inclination took him. His work can be read as a questioning of the primary elements which constitute the world and the relationship that binds them together, which are both a cosmic mystery and the evidence of a presence in the light. The answers he suggests create a singular and poetic universe, with a minimalism that is as humble as it is radical, “where fantasy can lift the deepest part of our being into the light air”.