Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

The present lot arrives from the collection of Berit Hokanson, a friend and collaborator of Guy de Cointet. At 18 years old, Hokanson left her native Sweden to take a job as an au pair in Los Angeles, where she would later meet Gus Foster, Guy de Cointet, and become a part of the swirling galaxy of the post-war California avant garde. “I was fairly new to the art scene,” Hokanson recalled, “I got introduced to the whole California and contemporary art scene through Gus Foster.” Hokanson describes the creative climate of the time as “very mind-expanding,” and met Guy de Cointet through Gus Foster shortly after one of de Cointet's performances at Cirrus Gallery. A textile artist, Hokanson went on to work behind the scenes with costumes and fabrication for de Cointet’s performances, and read one of his works for KPFK radio: “He wanted someone with a Swedish pronunciation of the letters and numbers, he wanted something different,” she recalls.

Hokanson describes de Cointet as the most private man she’s ever known—but not cold: a “very quiet, lovely, friendly person [who] preferred to observe people.” Towards the end of his life, de Cointet would live with Hokanson in Venice. Her son was studying at the University of California’s School of Cinematic Arts, and de Cointet created the titles for two of his student films. “[Guy] was of course way ahead of his time,” Hokanson offers, “His work was so different and so unusual…it took a while for the world to catch up.”