Original lithograph by Maurice Esteve, entitled "Composition", from the limited edition catalogue (2000 copies), "Prints from the Mourlot Press".
The catalogue was produced by Mourlot in 1964 to coincide with a major exhibition of lithographs held in that year.
The exhibition was held in honour of the deaths of three great artists in 1963, Braque, Villon and Cocteau, and was conceived as "a manifestation of Franco-American friendship.
Maurice Estève was born in France in 1904. In 1913 he moved to Paris with his parents, where he soon began his education as an artist. He was mostly self-taught but also attended the Académie Colarossi in Paris during the 1920s. Estève worked for a year as designer in a textile factory in Barcelona 1923 He was particularly influenced by the works of Cezanne in his early years, and later, in a move away from realism, by Leger, Matisse and Bonnard.
His first one-man exhibition was held in Paris in 1930. Later he worked as assistant to Robert Delauney on huge decorative panels created for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. In the 1940s his stylized figure, still-life and landscape compositions with strong colours gradually became completely abstract, with tight-knit interlocking shapes in rich, bold colours.
Estève's extensive work was not limited to the genre of painting. He also worked extensively in collage, textile design and murals even designing stained glass for a church in Switzerland. His artistic style established a new pictoral language. Lyrical abstractionswith colourful interwoven forms. His works are in many well-known museums and collections around the world.Maurice Estève died in 2001.
