André Maire

ANDRÉ MAIRE (Paris, 1898-1984).
"Young Cambodian women seated".1973.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed and dated in the lower margin.
Measurements: 59 x 71,5 cm; 66 x 79 cm (frame).

In this work, André Maire offers one of his most refined and lyrical visions of the Cambodian world, fruit of a long artistic and vital relationship with Southeast Asia. Three young women, arranged with natural elegance on a dais, form a scene of suspended calm, where soft gestures and collected gazes suggest a silent intimacy more evoked than narrated.

The composition is enveloped in an atmosphere of subtle unreality. The landscape, barely defined, and the stylized trees place the scene in a space that oscillates between the lived and the remembered. Color, intense and free, takes on a leading role: the flesh tones of green and ochre, along with the vibrant reds and oranges of the environment, reveal the imprint of post-impressionism and a sensibility close to Gauguin, where the exotic is transformed into plastic language.

The ornate fabrics and the presence of the animal in the foreground introduce a dynamic counterpoint within the general serenity, anchoring the scene in an everyday life reinterpreted with a profoundly poetic gaze. Far from the document, Maire builds here an internalized image, the fruit of memory and emotion.

Trained at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris with André Devambez and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Maire began his relationship with Asia at an early age when he was sent to Indochina after World War I, an experience that would mark his entire career. Throughout his life he traveled extensively - in Europe, Africa and India - developing a language based on drawing from life and reworking in the studio. In 1948 he returned to Indochina as a teacher in Dalat and Hanoi, consolidating a production focused on landscapes and local scenes. His work was recognized with awards such as the Prix Bastien-Lepage of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1961.