School of Paris Artist, Andre Minaux (Paris 1923-86)
Limited Edition 20/20, printed in 7 colours on Japon paper.
Sheet size 57" x 38", image size 49" x 32"
Signed Bottom right in pencil, editioned in pencil bottom left
With a full sheet authenticity certificate, dated 1964
This is a fabulous original Limited Edition Lithograph, completely of its time when artists in Paris were pushing boundaries and trying to bring about new styles. The influence of artists like Matisse can be seen and Minaux was working alongside artists such as Picasso and with Bernard Buffet to reject ideas of Abstract painting.
The text that accompanies the lithograph can be seen in the image of the certificate and is in French. The translation that follows on the certificate of Provenance gives an in depth description of this compelling still life:
'It is a singularly balanced art that that of André MINAUX, a typically French painting, made of power of clarity and nobility, in the tradition of our great modern masters as well as those of past centuries. And yet this painting under the hieratic appearance of the attitudes is not a wise painting, but on the contrary terribly dynamic, in which the passion and the virulence of the feelings are contained only by the simplicity and the purity of the forms. Each work of André Minaux is a miracle of balance between bubbling joy; joy of painting, joy of living; which animates the artist, and the voluntary serenity of the colors and volumes by which he translates his vision of beauty and grandeur. André Minaux's painting, full of a life in perpetual becoming, is the great and worthy expression of an art continually in evolution which moves without aggressiveness, but not without struggles, towards its final ends. And this painting, painting of an artist in full possession of all his means, of an extremely solid technique, and of a perfect trade is however that of a young person. Forty-one years is youth for a painter and at this age André Minaux, already recognized as one of the masters of the young French figurative school, has a future as brilliant and promising as behind him a long history of hard work and success. André Minaux is Parisian, born September 5, 1923. Very young he feels attracted to the graphic arts, he prepares and enters the School of Decorative Arts, but pure painting attracts him irresistibly and it is to her that he soon devotes himself exclusively. His young and great talent makes him quickly noticed. He first exhibited at the Salon des Sous de Trente Ans and later at other salons: des Indépendants, d'Automne, then at the Salon de Mai and at the Tuileries. In 1948 first private exhibition in Paris, others will follow in 1951, 1956 and 1957. In the meantime two exhibitions equal ment were devoted to him in London in 1953 and 1957. His last was a very important exhibition in 1963 at the David and Garnier Gallery in Paris. In 1949 at the 'Ecole de Paris', Galerie Charpentier, he had already won the Critics' Prize. Its reputation extends abroad thanks to numerous demonstrations of groups in England, Germany, Australia, Canada, Japon, U.S. A., etc... The Museum of Modern Art in Paris, several museums in the provinces, the Tate Gallery in London, have works by André Minaux, and his paintings can be found in major collections in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, etc. ... Member of the French engraver painters, André Minaux is a remarkable lithographer, his lithographed work is already very important, he is also a member of the "Comité National du Livre Illustré Français and he has illustrated a certain number of
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