Maurice Estève

Atelier Mourlot, New York City

1970

Maurice Estève was born May 2, 1904 in Culan in the Cher where he spent his childhood with his grandparents. He joined them in 1913 in Paris, where he discovered the Louvre Museum (he is particularly impressed by the Battle of San Romano by Paolo Ucello). Returning to Culan for the summer, he stayed there during the war years, began painting as early as 1915. He lived in Paris again from 1918. Apprentice to a typographer then to a modern furniture design studio, he followed Drawing evening class, discovers in 1919 the painting of Cézanne. Back in Paris he attended Montparnasse the free workshop of the Academy Colarossi. Marked until then by the painting of the Primitives and the work of Cézanne, it passed temporarily in 1927 the influence of surrealism, including Giorgio de Chirico. He presents his first solo exhibition in 1930 before becoming interested in film and directing. On the advice of Braque who participates, he is asked in 1936 to exhibit in Stockholm with Matisse, Picasso, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. He participated the following year in the realization of the wall decorations of Robert and Sonia Delaunay for the pavilions of the Aviation and Railways at the Universal Exhibition of Paris. Estève, who works regularly during the summer in Culan, makes lithographs, regularly practices watercolor but also charcoal, monotype, collage. In 1970, he received the Grand Prix National des Arts. From 1981 are organized several retrospectives of his work. The City of Bourges decided to present all the works (more than a hundred) which the painter donated to him in 1985 in the Hotel des Echevins, restored with the assistance of the Historic Monuments and the Direction of the Museums of France to become the "Estève Museum", inaugurated in 1987. Estève moved permanently to Culan in 1995. He died on June 27, 2001.