Harold COUSINS

Criticism

Harold COUSINS personifies the long and striking line of North American artists who chose Paris and Europe to grow and assert their talent which, for this creator, is sculpture. An African-American, Harold COUSINS was born in 1916 in Washington. He worked for the coast guard from 1943 to 1945, and began to paint and sculpt in 1946 before moving to Paris in 1949 where he abandoned an excellent and modern style of painting for sculpture while studying at the "Grande-Chaumière". However, in 1967, Harold COUSINS left Paris where he had asserted his artistic career to settle and work in Brussels where he died in 1992. A perfect demonstration of the plurality of concepts dedicated to an artist’s talent, and an expert attentive to the exciting flavours of Normandy’s rural proverbs, this artist exhibited many times in his native country, then in France, including Rouen in 1960 at the Museum of Fine Arts, and lastly in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium until 1987. All these presentations were accompanied by excellent and multiple articles. Through sculpture, Harold COUSINS was a tireless researcher, exploring styles and materials with equal success from the native purity of African wood to the symbolist and almost cubist terracotta work and his bronzes that capture the realistic warmth in subjects’ faces. In addition, the informal rigour and bold alliance of materials allowed him an ironic or joyful vision of his linear constructions that, due to the intelligent division of space, are of a surprising and elegant balance. Throughout his career, Harold COUSINS maintained his audacity and his clear and specific talent. His sense of the concrete always dominated even if he energetically expressed distinguishing features of a modernist style that burned with passion but also sincerity.

André RUELLAN, art critic

Exhibitions

There is no exhbitions for this artist yet.