–  Torron: “Interview with Lluís Cots”. Diario Español, Tarragona, 4.7.1971.

– Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Catalogue presentation of the Lluís Cots Exhibition”, Subex Art Gallery, Barcelona, April 1973.

“Cots is himself. His work penetrates the expressionist trend of the abstract, not to conform to fashion but because it is the syntax that best suits his message. As a result, he presents us with works that connect with the public as they reflect the reality of our world. His work is hot. His art breaks away with tradition in order to join the most avant-garde movements”..

– Vallés, Josep Ma.: ““Art. Exhibitions. Cots at Subex Art Gallery”. Tele-Exprés, Barcelona, 17.4.1973.

“Expression reminiscent of Tàpies, solid, stodgy textures, wood additions, though Cots’ work, rather than suffering feeling, suggests rebellion, imaginative madness, vital impulse, vivid frenzy“..

– Giralt Miracle, Daniel: “Cots at Subex Art Gallery”. Destino magazine, Barcelona, 21.4.1973.

“Cots tries to take his abstractions beyond inter-artistic concomitants. His work boldly tackles the treatment of space as a means of expression”.

– Sáenz-Díez, Margarita: “Subex a new art gallery”. Informaciones de las Artes y las Letras, Madrid,26.4.1973.

“Cots’ work leaves the familiar common ground behind to materialise his idea, which he achieves by having a 3-dimensional approach and making use of materials never used before like sands, cement and, to a great extent, synthetic resins”.

– Moure, Gloria: “Cots”. Gaceta del Arte, Madrid,  30.5.1973.

“The iconography is permeated by certain sexual and social recurrent elements that highlight the communicative value of the work, which at all times tries to stay away from formal decorative nihilism to align itself with the current behavioural trends”.

– Giralt Miracle, Daniel:  “Catalogue presentation of the Lluís Cots Exhibition” at Subex Art Gallery, Barcelona, November 1974.

“Halfway between the monster and the ghost, between the grotesque and the malformed, between the giant and the dwarf, Cots confronts us with a zoological group of anthropomorphic origin with which he reflects, as cruelly as the new medium allows him to, the critical burden Man has to bear in our civilisation. But his monsters do not use their disproportions and deformities to scare us or to lead us to the Horrendous. His characters waylay us because they exaggerate, maximise or because parts of their bodies, minds or what surrounds them are out of proportion, and they look at the problems of the contemporary Man straight in the eye”..

– Moure, Gloria:  “Photographic dossier, Lluís Cots Exhibition at Subex Art Gallery”. Arte Batik magazine, Barcelona, November, 1974.

“Regarding colour, he normally uses ochre as a base, with an obvious tactile attitude. Black, as a smudge, is sparsely used except to highlight the maleness of sex. It is, however, very much used to paint signs, sometimes tainted with red. The range of bloodshot reds is recurrent in his work, both as stains and graphic representations”..

– Dols Rusiñol, Joaquim: “Cots at Subex Art Gallery”. Destino magazine, Barcelona, 23.11.1974.

“I see Cots as an artist very much aware of where his art is leading to, adamant to reveal his complex inner world and eager to achieve an effective communication”.

– Galí, Francesc: “An artist’s reflections on his work: Lluís Cots”. Mundo Diario, Barcelona, 16.11.1974.

– Vallés, Josep Ma.: “Art on Friday”. Tele-Exprés, Barcelona, 22.11.1974.

– Galí, Francesc: “Cots at Subex Art Gallery”. Mundo Diario, Barcelona, 28.11.1974.

“Cots – still young – has a lot to say from his informal and paradoxically-constructed art: authentic because it emerges from gesture itself”..

– Castillo, Alberto: “Cots”. Diari de Barcelona, 30.11.1974.

“Without losing his interest in exhibiting matter, he moves to figurative human shapes, demystifying the homo sapiens, who may become a threatening monster or a despicable doodle, revealing their oversized sexual organs lest someone doubt their prowess”.

– Miralles, Francesc: “Lluís Cots after the landscape”. La Vanguardia, Barcelona,16.9.1984.

“For some critics, both male and female, Lluís Cots lacks the references which could make his work become the latest fashion. In my view, he has too much depth and knowledge to be taken into account”.

– García, Josep Ma.: “Art”. La Guía del Ocio. Barcelona, 14.8.1987.

– Sas, Mercè : “Lluís Cots and Santi Cabús in Castelldefels”, Diari de Barcelona, 26.8.1984.

– Torres, S.: “Cots at Ginesta Art Gallery”.El Llobregat Magazine, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, 29.8.1987.

 

– Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Lluís Cots: Initial reflection. Catalogue presentation of the exhibition at Cajamadrid”, Barcelona, 1988.

“His work emerges as a synthesis between the linear and the pictorial. The composition has an orderly structure, despite his stroke suggests certain violence. At the same time, a controlled randomness – paint stains spilled on the canvas – stresses this expressive character, quasi- Baroque. Both elements confront each other in an obsessive struggle but end up integrating in a homogeneous whole, symbolising the triumph of the whole over the parts: the perfect equation between the artist and his work. At last the canvas has blood-sucked the artist and possessed him”.

– Guasch, Anna: Diari de Barcelona, 21.9.1988.

“His use of black and white monochromes, in other words, the absence of colour, is essential. According to Triadó, the absence of colour “is the result of an introspection devoid of references; it is the shapeless, senseless dream; it’s Reason deprived of superfluous connotations; it’s pictorial truth”.

–  “Lluís Cots, an itinerary”. Revista El Punto de las Artes, Madrid, 20.9.1988.

 

– Cadena, Josep Ma.: “Art”. El Periódico, Barcelona, 1.10.1988.

“Lluís Cots is an artist stricto senso. To the unprejudiced connoisseur, this is stating the obvious, but I’m writing this for those who are familiar with other forms of art so that they observe his works closely, and realise that they shed light from their immense blackness. Every sign is precise, and every stain well placed where it belongs”..

– Miralles, Francesc: “Lluís Cots: his interest in shape”. La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 11.10.1988.

“These paintings – which we should perhaps call drawings, despite being on canvas or using polyurethane – use a rectangle as a base, which repeats itself, overlaps with others and may be lost amongst others: I think it would be a mistake to talk about constructivism, even though they have a linear order, because Lluís Cots’ aim is not to order or reorganise the empty canvas or paper space but to synthesise the shapes, reduce them to a sketch”.

– Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Catalogue presentation of the Lluís Cots Exhibition”. Greca Art Gallery, Barcelona, 1990.

“His work is here, freed from iconographic connotations, clear in its content and its outer expression. It is the result of the struggle between order and chaos, a balance between reason and feeling. Throughout his career, Cots’ main goal has been to find the shapes that best express his plastic message. He has never felt satisfied; he has never found his ideal. It is for this simple reason that his painting is at the same time confident and questioning, serene and vibrant, pleasant and aggressive”.

– Cadena, Josep Ma: “Art”. El Periódico, Barcelona, 20.11.1990.

– López, H.: “Rationality and gesture in the works of Lluís Cots”. Heraldo de Aragón, Zaragoza, 30.10.1991.

– Nungeser, M.: “Catalogue presentation of the exhibition Barcelona Besucht Berlin”. Berlín, 1992.

– Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Presentation of Lluís Cots in the catalogue of the exhibition Barcelona Besucht Berlin”, Berlín, 1992.

–  Brückner, Birgit: “Kultur des Südens besucht den Norden. Fünf  katalanische Künstler zeigen in Wedding zeitgenössische Kunst”. Berliner Morgenpost, Berlín, 21.9.1992.

“Cots, on the other hand, uses a thick brush and synthetic black paint on his canvas, where he leaves small white spaces. An aggressive style, full of violence, which is compensated again by the fine white spaces”.

–  Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Lluís Cots. Second reflection”. ARTE, visual arts magazine, January-February, Barcelona 1993.

“His painting avoids literature and description in order to become work of admirable formal purity. Cots does not describe a reality, but rather writes a new formal reality that has nothing to do with everyday images. In his artistic process, these Images are present, since reality is something that the human mind internalises and make its own. But Lluís Cots knows how to reinterpret them, how to turn them into something new, how to create a new universe that is more mental than descriptive […] Lluís Cots is not a nihilist. His work is based on the rational and vital construction of a world that flees from nothingness to offer a vigorous and positive way out. The result of these compositions is faithful correlative to the demands he puts on himself in the face of a world full of negation. He knows how to combine in an admirable way cries and hope, the negative and the positive. His art is honest because his work reflects the truth and reality, clean and bare. […] The work of Lluís Cots is, in short, the triumph of painting, understood as the constant search for forms that communicate, that speak with the spectator”.

–  Triadó, Joan Ramon: Art in Catalonia.. Ediciones Cátedra, 1994, pages 302 and 304 illus.

–  Nungeser, M.: “Article in the dictionary of artists Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon”, 1999.

–  Ernould-Gandouet, M.: “Lluís Cots or the passionate balance. Presentation of the catalogue of the Exhibition”, Lina Davidov Art Gallery, Paris, 1999.

“In the aforementioned pictures, the ‘Centaur’ is used as a symbol which serves as a bridge between the masculine and the feminine, the artist dedicates two, three or even more sessions of work to each picture, sometimes going back to it, as if it were hard for him to leave these sensual and passionate paintings. His work speaks of the presence and the absence of the beloved, of caresses and love, and reveals the secret of the world: the relationship between men and women, just as Picasso did, another artist who came from Catalonia. Lluís Cots wants to inscribe the projection of intense emotion in space, with strength and tenderness. He wants to talk of the importance of loving, as Spanish art has done before and so doing, come near to the passion of Goya and rediscover the space of Velázquez”.

–  De Guevara, Felipe: El Punto de las Artes magazine, Madrid, 10.9.1999.

 

–  Paredes, Tomás: “Lluís Cots o el equilibrio apasionado”. El Punto de las Artes magazine, Madrid, 17.9.1999.

“First of all the clarity, the neatness, the cleanliness of the surfaces, of the colour, of the shapes,
referential or otherwise. There is a clear tendency to “baroquise” but before this, it is black and white, black and permanent green, the great expressionist expansion where all the desires to be, to exist, come together in search of horizons through great pathways where colour gradually appears as they come to being”..

–  Prudon, Montserrat:“The Mediterranean: a world upside down or a hidden reference”. II Colloque de l’AFC, Rennes 1999.

“This multiple image with an apparent unity, in the stubborn search for authenticity, to conclude, would lead us to focus on the process of a contemporary Catalan artist, Lluís Cots. His work is a perfect illustration of the artist’s search for what is real. A reality which never forgets the origins of the look that created it in the first place. There is no doubt that the work is abstract, but has a lyrical quality which was also found in Cubism, because the work is the transcription of an experience that was once an anecdote. Not to reproduce but to recreate with the rigour of a building (geometric structural elements, triangle, circle or square) and with the use of the vocabulary (the discourse) of colour. Maybe it is this point that illustrates the path we are studying. One cannot deny the in-formative function of the classic rules, underlying reference and therefore deliberately suppressed. The artist takes pleasure in transforming these rules, which are like strong roots, to portray his view of the world, an adverse universe, and to start a different world. In this “open” painting, because it is open to everybody, the essential point is to “build a cosmos from chaos” 1. Is this not indeed the legacy par excellence of the Mediterranean Peoples?”.

¹  Ernould-Gandouet, M.: “Lluís Cots or the passionate balance. Presentation of the catalogue of the exhibition”, Lina Davidov Art Gallery,, Paris,  e1999.

–  Bufill, Juan: “Cots at A. Sales Art Gallery”, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 27.6.2002.

 

–  Irala, Pilar: “Catalogue presentation of the Lluís Cots Exhibition”, Carmen Tatché Art Gallery, Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona), September 2005.

 “Cots’ work, and this series in particular, inevitably mixes the emotional aspect of life and the energy with which he lives this life. And in his canvasses and in his words, he creates similes and imagines a railway track. Thus goes life, thus goes art too, needing two railway tracks, can’t do with just one. And his colours, black, blue, vermillion, the colours of nature at dusk and dawn. Maybe those of life itself, waking up each day to create over and over again, with emotion and energy”.

–  Feliu, Marta: “Artists of today”, BonArt magazine. June 2005.

–  Giró, Pilar: – Giró, Pilar: “Lluís Cots: ‘Survivors’ “. BonArt, magazine. September 2005.

– Triadó, Joan Ramon: “Lluís Cots. Tercera reflexió.” Barcelona, Novembre 2015.

“From the distant 1992, when I wrote a Second reflection on Lluís Cots’ work, his evolution has been a constant development marked by events and personal experiences that have influenced the shapes and concepts of his plastic production. We described his Centaur series (1989-1991) as a rational construction deprived of colour. Black and white shaped his compositions, characterized by a vibrant and expressive geometrism. In the Centaur II series (1992-1994), colour appears with red, blue and green hues, as if it wanted to break the serenity/balance of its previous presence with a positive awakening full of life, although its geometry, expressed by forms showing a marked vertical emphasis, apparently wants to mitigate a sort of chaos.

The following year, in the Figure I series, Cots’ work turned to figurative painting, as if he wanted to resume the search of his own self and to emerge from abstraction, although geometry forces still encircled him, preventing him from finding freedom. And then he went back to introspection in search of very concrete shapes, such as portraits of an unknown and yet well known character: himself in black and white, colourless. It was the Figure II series, one of the most disturbing and intense series delving into his inner self.

In 1998, the Femme et Arlequin series again shows us Cots breaking up the figure, this time a female one, playing with an amiable title that contains an almost destructive force resulting from two opposed desires: love and sex, the latter being understood as the je t ‘aime… moi non plus of the song. In these works we can see well-defined faces, which, as the series progresses, become emphatically schematic, almost unrecognisable.

In 1999 Cots goes back to abstraction, with black strokes on a coloured background – liberating forms belonging to a troubled time. We must now insist that Lluís Cots’ work never lies, because it articulates itself through his élan vital, his way of thinking, his way of being, his way of expressing his personality, full of vitality and at the same time somewhat tortured. It is his way of seeking the fire of gods, that inspiration that leads to the perfectdream for mortals, but a cherished one for artists.

In 1999 Cots goes back to abstraction, with black strokes on a coloured background – liberating forms belonging to a troubled time. We must now insist that Lluís Cots’ work never lies, because it articulates itself through his élan vital, his way of thinking, his way of being, his way of expressing his personality, full of vitality and at the same time somewhat tortured. It is his way of seeking the fire of gods, that inspiration that leads to the perfectdream for mortals, but a cherished one for artists.

The Twin Towers destruction and its consequences have a traumatic impact on the 2002 series. In these works the red of blood and the black of death reflectthe tragedy as well as the artist’s shock. They are high-intensity works that, at the same time, express dejection and impotence in the face of tragedy, chaos and the loss of ethical values. This anxiety is still visible in the Offering series (2003), where shadows seem to emerge amid the informal chaos.

A different Cots – a Cots who breaks with his previous artistic path, with his stylistic features both in abstraction and figuration – shows a strange work, as if he wanted to break with his whole past. He names this series Survivors (2004-2005), which is the reflection of both an artistic and personal crisis. It is as if he asked himself: who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing? And in order to get out of a creative and personal prison he makes the Interior with window series, where he schematically draws spaces that open up to the world of creation. And he does so with an extremely subtle work, a fresh work that shows that negative introspection has been overcome. And he goes back to nature. His Trees series (2006-2009) is a reunion with the world, a way out of darkness and a return to light. These three years will be followed by three more years, from 2010 to 2013, devoted to the Landscapes series, reminiscent of the Bambina and Barcelona series. It’s the end of a path, a search for life that enables him to achieve his most personal creation, a return to himself. And during the next two years (2014-2015) he throws himself into the creation of the Angels series.

For Cots, his series are the fruit of a long process during which the concept takes shape. Although each painting speaks for itself, what he wants to express and communicate only becomes evident when we look at the whole series, made up by several pieces. It is necessary for our vision and analysis – as critics – to understand this process, and to do this we must look at his work chronologically and reflect on the whys and wherefores. A creative work –such as his– does not consist only of forms that may be more or less successful, but of something that conveys what the author wants to tell us, what he wants to express and what he wants us to reflect on.

As previously mentioned, the only series that drifts away from his artistic path is Survivors, but then it was entirely necessary for him to distance himself from his personal and changing work. Although his work has evolved over time, his artistic personality is evident in all his series, and despite all their differences, there is something that puts them together and makes us see some constant elements in them. They are Cots, a rational Cots, an emotional Cots, an expressive Cots, a dramatic Cots, restless, happy, in love… but always Cots.

The name of the series Angels encompasses what is masculine and what is feminine. It also includes various sorts of angels: the righteous and the fallen ones, the spiritual and the material ones, the serene and the tragic ones, angels and demons. Throughout this series the figures are seen from several angles: just focusing the face or the whole body; located in a central position or in a marginal one at the edge of the composition. And colour emerges, as if the artist wanted to forget the Figure I and Figure II series. They are Cots’ colours – green, red, blue, white and black blend into wholes of great plastic firmness with a powerful expressionism, visible in the traits which define human beings with a strong dramatic impact. Cots feels confident and adds his signature, integrating it into the whole. The work and the artist become one thing, showing us that he has reached the Promised Land after a long journey through the desert.

On my Second reflection I concluded that Lluís Cots’ work was, ultimately, the triumph of painting, understood as a constant search for ways to communicate, to talk to the viewer. Now we must add that it challenges and shakes the viewer. Nowadays painting on traditional media seems to be in crisis; we must break up the medium, they say. And they do so in many ways, through installations or performances where the body is the formal element and the medium at the same time. Cots achieves painted performances, since his angels are himself, expressing himself on canvas or cardboard. And like performances, he leaves no one indifferent.

Before I conclude, I would like to declare that the present series, Angels, provesthat we are facing the work of a mature Cots, a work that after long interludes between exhibitions must gain visibility”.

– Camps, Eudald:  “Pintar per convicció”  Diari de Girona, 31-3-2017

Lluís Cots (Barcelona, 1946) returns to the El Claustre Art Gallery in Figueres (Girona) with a selection of his best series.

When discussing painting, the first Catalan aesthete to hit a raw nerve was Xavier Rubert de Ventós: in his inaugural El arte ensimismado (1963) he denounced something which is still true today: that painting shows a constant irrepressible tendency to look inwards in search of references, to gaze at its own navel. It is not a coincidence that Rubert de Ventós’ book was published at a time when Formalism was at its peak: trying to fix a syntax that allowed us to read (literally) any work of art – even if belonging to different periods-, its lexis full of terms like diagonal, rhythms, internal relations, repetitions, similarities and such like. It was the perfect strategy, in particular for the institutions in charge of establishing the parameters which would articulate the art market (often too volatile and changing for capital’s taste).

In fact, the Catalan philosopher was anticipating the autarchic dream that people like Pierre Gaudibert (theorist of the so-called Supports-surfaces) would defend around 1970: “The aim of the painting is painting itself – he claimed in a text entitled La peinture en question-, the paintings on display only refer to themselves, regardless of the artist’s personality, his biography or the history of art”. As simple as that. According to Gaudibert, wild subjectivity was something to be ousted insomuch as painting was “a reality in its own right”. The way to achieve it was obviously completely opposed to the so-called sensualist proposal: “It is not a case of returning to the origins, but the simple exposure of pictorial elements (…). Hence the neutrality of the works on display, the absence of lyricism or expressive depth”. We are talking about the time Danto chose to refer to as one of “disorderly information” (from the 60’s onwards), a demanding period which was cruel to painting…. For clarification, let’s imagine a contemporary Hamlet outside any museum or art gallery, staring at a paintbrush – he’s holding it with his right hand lifted up to his eyeline- and wondering about the “deep” sense of his work: “To paint or not to paint, that is the question”. It would resonate like a mantra across the whitewashed walls of the “cemetery of works”. In any case, the origin of the dilemma that would upset our hypothetical Prince of Denmark is double: on the one hand, he would have forgotten that what Harold Bloom still claims for poetry is equally valid for painting, namely that a poem always resonates a former one and that even if we don’t know it or we don’t “really” have it in front of our eyes, it is as real as the verses that reveal it. On the other hand, that “doing” and “feeling” can’t (or shouldn’t) always be thought of separately: insofar as the artist acts by “necessity” (in the most desirable case), the sense of his doing will lie on the doing itself.

Lluís Cots made his debut in the early 70s, at a particularly tumultuous moment for visual arts, a time which made the practice of painting a heroic option doomed to grow and evolve in an ocean of contradictions, except for those like Rubert de Ventós and Gaudibert. It is only from this perspective that we can understand the pendular relationship that Lluís Cots has had with the extraordinary catalogue of possibilities that his discipline entails: material or gestural, figurative or abstract, monochrome or deeply colourful, poetic or literary… All of them are valid options if chosen from a strictly vital necessity. Although he has never stopped working, the long periods when he has chosen to distance himself from the exhibition circuit illustrate perfectly well what is the last option for painting: emerge when necessary in the shape (the visual dress) that creative need and creative will require.

 

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