French Natural

Into the artistic spotlight which remains jumpily fixed on Picasso's generation a few younger Frenchmen have lately popped. Last week one of these was introduced to the U. S. by Manhattan Dealer Julien Levy, whose eye is on Paris like a hawk's. The debutant was Rene Pierre Tal-Coaet, a shy, husky, onetime Breton sailor, now 32, who has lived for ten years in one sixth-floor room at 5 Rue 'de Plaisance, teaching himself how to paint. In probably the first period of French history when a painter could win repute without one sniff at an art school, Artist Tal-Coaet has forged ahead slowly, was adjudged by Manhattaniles last week to be very near the real McCoy. The paintings on view were mostly done before his first successful Paris exhibition a year ago: small landscapes and still-lifes, drawn to look like what they are supposed to be, but designed in dark tone patterns as abstract as anything surrealist. Against straight surrealism Artist Tal-Coaet has set his face. Says he: "Surrealists and modern abstractionists run the risk of producing nothing but a series of colored symbols." Rumored to be a protege of Gertrude Stein's, he has in fact seen her only once, when he did a sombre Portrait, whose hands he had to rework ten times before they satisfied him.

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