Maurice Estève

MAURICE ESTÈVE (Culan, France, 1904–2001).
“Anubis,” 1969.
Lithograph, print no. 9/95.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 78 x 59.5 cm.

The lithograph “Anubis” reflects Maurice Estève’s characteristic abstract style, based on the construction of the image through large geometric forms with curved and irregular contours that interlock like a mosaic. Far from purely geometric abstraction, the artist organizes space through an intuitive balance of color, form, and rhythm, creating compositions of great dynamism and harmony. The intense color palette—dominated by yellows, reds, blues, greens, and violets—is one of the most distinctive features of his work, in which color takes on a structural and expressive role. Likewise, the fragmentation of surfaces through linear grids and graphic patterns introduces a rich variety of textures that intensifies the visual rhythm of the composition. Although it dispenses with figurative representation, the work retains a poetic evocation of nature and landscape, a constant in Estève’s body of work.

Maurice Estève moved to Paris in 1913, where he began his training as an artist. He worked for a year as a designer at a textile factory in Barcelona in 1923. During his visits to the Louvre in the 1920s, Estève was particularly impressed by the painters Jean Fouquet and Paolo Uccello, although Paul Cézanne exerted a greater influence on Estève’s work. Maurice Estève was largely self-taught; he attended only the free studio at the Académie Colarossi in 1924, where he sought to constructively arrange his motifs following the model of Georges Braque and Fernand Léger, thereby creating a kind of Cubist Fauvism. Estève began to move away from realism in 1928, and in the following years was influenced by Léger, Matisse, and Bonnard. His first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Yvangot in Paris in 1930. He worked as an assistant to Robert Delaunay on enormous decorative panels for the 1937 Paris International Exposition. In the 1940s, his compositions of stylized figures, still lifes, and landscapes in bold colors gradually became completely abstract, featuring tightly intertwined forms in rich, daring colors. Esteve’s extensive body of work was not limited to painting. He was also actively involved in collage, textile design, and murals. Maurice Estève participated in the 1954 Venice Biennale. His work, like that of his artistic colleagues Riopelle and Bazaine, established a new pictorial language: lyrical abstractions aimed at representing form and color with an almost poetic sensibility.