Esteve, Maurice

The French artist Maurice Estève belongs to the young generation of painters from the École de Paris who, after the war, daringly continued what founding avant-gardists, including Picasso, Delaunay, Léger, Matisse and others, had started before the First World War. The biographical information in his catalogue raisonné shows that the self-taught artist Estève could barely live off his art at first. It was only in 1960, when the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne in Paris bought one of his paintings, that he received some attention and appreciation for his abstract work.

Today, he is considered as an “insider tip”, especially for his graphic work. Even though Estève reached nearly 100 years of age, he only produced around 100 works of printmaking. From 1952 - the year he created his first colour lithograph - until the end of his productivity in 1986, he made only 76 lithographs. Most of them were only printed in small editions. It is no surprise then that his original posters are much sought-after. They feature just 8 motifs and were all printed at Mourlot.