Maurice Esteve (1904-2001)

     French painter born in Culan, Cher. He went to Paris in 1919 in the face of opposition from his father and took a variety of jobs, including designer for a furniture factory, while familiarizing himself with art in the Louvre. In 1923 he worked as draughtsman for a textile factory in Barcelona. On his return to Paris he studied at the Academie Colarossi and had his first exhibition at the Gal. Yvangot in 1930. During the 1930s he exhibited at the Salon des Surindependants and the Salon des Tuileries, selling his first picture in 1934 at a retrospective exhibition of French art in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1937 he collaborated with Robert DELAUNAY on decorations for the Air and Railways pavilions at the Exposition Universelle. He was represented in the epoch-making exhibition 'Jeunes Peintres de la Tradition Francaise' in 1941 and from that time he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. During the 1930s his style evolved in a manner akin to that of PIGNON. In his early days in Paris he planted the seeds of an enthusiasm for the Cezanne of Les Joueurs de cartes, as became manifest in his Les Partie de cartes and Canape Bleu of 1935. To this was added an influence from the post-cubist manner of PICASSO and BRAQUE, with both of whom he had a basic affinity as manifested in his Cantate de Bach of 1938. He gradually developed towards a colorful abstraction of semi-geometrical forms based upon the figure compositions, interiors and still-lifes which had been his principal subjects from the early 1930s. By the 1950s he was recognized as an outstanding representative of the school of TACHISM whose members derived their abstractions from natural appearances in the manner taught by Roger BISSIERE. His color remained always both subtle and bold. His reputation grew internationally and in 1956 he was given a one-man show in Copenhagen, in 1961 a retrospective at the Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf.