1934 - 1983

Born in Paris (France), works in Los Angeles (United States).

Guy de Cointet is one of the artists that best synthesizes the new relationship between theatre and contemporary art, from the end of the 1960s onwards. His work is based on the hermeticism of language and on art's capacity to invent systems of representation between play and logic. In contrast with the white cube usually used as the exhibition site, Guy de Cointet's work takes place in an ambiguous, borderline territory between museum and stage, since his installations were conceived as theatre sets and as artefacts with meaning and narrative function. Guy de Cointet, an artist's artist, also represents a turning point in Californian/ West Coast conceptual art, a point of reference for Allen Ruppersberg or early artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, and one of the keys for understanding the renewed interest in performative practices based on narration, so characteristic of artists such as Dora García, Catherine Sullivan and Julien Bismuth.