Background
Guy de Cointet was born in Paris in 1934, the son of a military officer
Guy de Cointet was born in Paris in 1934, the son of a military officer
He attended high school with Yves Saint Laurent and the fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot, both of whom shared and influenced de Cointet"s interest in fashion. After unsuccessfully competing in a 1952 clothing design competition sponsored by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, de Cointet attended the École des Beaux-Arts de Nancy.
In 1956 he moved to Paris, where he worked as an illustrator for the magazines Vogue and Jardin des Mondes. de Cointet moved to New York in 1965, following brief stays in the Canary Islands and in central France near Limoges. Bell hired de Cointet as an assistant, working first at Bell"s studio in New New York He later followed Bell to Venice Beach, California, where de Cointet would reside until his death in 1983.
Between 1975 and 1977 he taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, giving courses focusing on performance art
Theater critic Frantisek Deak once wrote of Cointet"s structuralist approach that the artist juxtaposed "lifelike casual conversation with contrived literary language.. out that both are particular styles and that, with a certain distance, the casual conversation will appear contrived as well.".