Albert Coste

1895 – Albert Coste is born November 8th at Marseille. He is the son of Léonce Coste and Andrea Giletta-Defly. His mother, a musician has initiated him to music, that he will practice all his life long.
1909 – He is following his education both at Fine Arts school of Marseille and at Music Conservatoire.
1914 – He is selected for the “Grand Prix de Rome”, but the war interrupts the contest and he is exempted from the army for health reasons.
1915 – He meets Camille Maïsse, a young player, who died from a meningitis, which affected seriously the young man.
1916 – Accident with a tramway; he looses two fingers from the left hand. He is definitively exempted from his military duties and his career of violoncellist is drastically compromised. He then devoted himself to painting and achieved his full artistic education in Paris at Cormon workshop.
1919 – He married Paulette Sallé, a piano-player he met several years earlier at Marseille, in October. They lived in a workshop at Porte de Versailles. He meets Maurice Denis and shares his workshop.
1922 – Both financial difficulties and Paulette poor health conduct them to returnin the South to establish them at Aix en Provence.
1933 – Exhibition at “Galerie de Provence”. First Maurice Denis text.
1935 – Elected to the Beaux Arts de Provence under Maurice Denis recommendation. .
1939 – Exhibition at “la Galerie Studio”. Second Maurice Denis text.

1941 – Helps Maurice Denis to the decoration of the Chapel of Crete at Thonon.
1942 – Meets Albert Gleizes at Saint Remy de Provence. They will become closed friends until the death of the master in 1953. He is now applying the rules of the Cubism theorician (translation-rotation).
1945 – Decoration of the Chapell of the Catholic College of Aix en Provence.
1946 – Creates the painting workshop at the “Fine Arts School“.
1952 – His painting is more and more oriented to abstraction influenced by science and sensibility. He achieves a huge fresca of 12 by 4,50 meters.
1953 – At Gleizes death, he will follow his studies about colour, lining, rhythm, in an abstract production which joins the musical composition until the end of his life.
1965 – Retires from the “Fine Arts” and installs himself by Jean Pierre Rhein at Tholonet.
1967 – Leaves the institute for American Universities where he has been teaching – for 8 years.
1977 – Albert Coste sales auction at Enghien.
1978 - Albert Coste sales auction at Drouot. His wife died this year.
1980 – He is elected to the “Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles Lettres”, d’Aix en provence.
1985 – He dies August 22nd, after a fall visiting an exhibition of Victor Hugo inks at Borely Museum at Marseille.