Jean De Maisonseul
Abstract Composition XVII, 1950-60 - oil paint, 112x92 cm
1950-60

Name: Abstract Composition XVII, 1950-60 - oil paint, 112x92 cm
Brand: Jean De Maisonseul
Price: 13043.66 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Oil on canvas, signed on back. Jean Pandrigue de Maisonseul was born in Algiers on August 3, 1912. During the conquest of Algeria his great-grandfather, a naval officer from the Vivarais, had landed at Sidi-Ferruch on July 4, 1830. His grandfather Also mariner, admiral then commander of the port of Algiers, his father lawyer. Jean de Maisonseul began to draw in 1922. From 1928 he attended painting courses at the "Academy-Art" of Alfredo Figueras, a Catalan painter who was a political refugee in Algiers, a friend of Picasso. He binds himself with the Algerian painter Louis Bénisti. From 1929 to 1934 he worked as a draftsman at Pierre-André Emery, a Swiss architect based in Algiers in 1928 after having been a close collaborator of Le Corbusier in Paris. Maisonseul also studied architectural courses at the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers from 1930 to 1933. In 1931 Maisonseul joined Le Corbusier, who regularly stays in Algeria from 1931 to 1936, visiting the Casbah of Algiers. "We measured the steps of the stairs, the masonry benches, the dimensions of the openings and the niches, the ceiling heights and those of the supports of the parapets of the terraces. These measures revolved around the constants ... which I found 20 years later when the Modulor was published, "he recalled. In 1931 Maisonseul also became acquainted with Albert Camus, who had been met by his fellow student, Max-Pol Fouchet, who gave him his first yet unpublished works. In 1936 a scholarship allowed Maisonseul to obtain a diploma in town planning from the Urban Planning Institute of the University of Paris. On his return to Algeria in 1939, he was a draftsman at the Bureau of the Regional Plan of Algiers, soon to become the Urban Planning Department of the Algiers Department, which he directed from 1947 to 1956. He was simultaneously secretary general of the Urbanism Institute Of the University of Algiers. Participating in the rapid development of the city of Algiers, it takes a large part in the classification of the monuments and historical sites of Algeria. Closer to the philosopher André Mandouze, Maisonseul met from 1946 many Algerian intellectuals and artists. He particularly associated himself with the poet Jean Sénac, participated in the reviews "Soleil" and then "Terrasses" that he animated, and began to expose his drawings and paintings to the bookshop of Edmond Charlot. In 1947, he met Baya, whom Mireille Farges' aunt he married in 1956, and participated from 1952 to 1954 in the efforts of the "Friends of the Arab Theater" who tried to establish an intercultural dialogue. After the earthquake of Orleansville (now Chlef), September 9, 1954, Maisonseul is in charge of the urban plan for the reconstruction of the city. In 1956 Maisonseul and his "Friends of the Arab Theater", who set up a committee for peace, came closer to Camus who had come to Algiers on 22 January to deliver his speech "The Call for a Civil Truce in Algeria" Maisonseul and Amar Ouzegane, the nationalist leaders of the Algiers zone accepted the idea, but rejected by French leaders such as Guy Mollet who, on the evening of the "Tomatoes Day" (6 February 1956) In vain Maisonseul and the Algerian "Liberals." On denunciation and after search Houseseul is quickly mistreated by the power, accused of attacking the security of the State, imprisoned on May 26 in the prison Barbarossa. "It will be necessary to stop me too," writes Le Monde Camus, who defends him at once energetically, until his provisional release on 12 June. Jean de Maisonseul exhibited in 1960 at the Comte-Tinchant gallery with Jean-Aimé-Roger Durand and René Sintès. In November 1962 he was appointed Conservator of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers under the auspices of co-operation, at the request of the Algerian Ministry of Education, and carried out the long negotiations leading to the restitution of some 300 works Museum deposited in the Louvre on the eve of Independence - "although from the beginning André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, recognized that these works belonged to Algeria," he will clarify. In July 1963 Jean de Maisonseul reopened the Museum, introducing the works of the young Algerian painters. He participated in the exhibition "Algerian Painters" organized for the "Feasts of November 1" and prefaced by Jean Sénac3 and organized a retrospective of the gouaches of Baya that he encourages to resume his work, interrupted after his marriage for nearly ten years. "They are friends, the ones of Maisonseul, very great friends, who pushed me," says Baya in 1994: "when I took my first brush, my first paper was Mireille and Jean de Maisonseul who Had offered them to me. " Jean de Maisonseul will then preface the new exhibitions of Baya. In 1963 in Algiers, the following year in Paris and again in Algiers, Maisonseul participated simultaneously among his friends painters at the first

Creator:

Jean De Maisonseul (1912 - 1999, French)

Creation Year:

1950-60

Dimensions:

Height: 44.1 in (112 cm)Width: 36.23 in (92 cm)Depth: 1.58 in (4 cm)

Medium:

Oil

Movement & Style:

Abstract

Period:

Mid-20th Century