Maria Manton

Maria Manton (1910 - 2003) is a painter painter nonfigurative French E of the news Ecole of Paris.

Biography

Maria Manton is born the December 4th 1910 with Blida (Algérie). At the time of the occupation in 1870 of the Alsace by the Germany, his/her maternal grandparents came to settle in the neighborhoods of the city. Originating in Tarbes, his/her father is military career and during ten years the family follows her displacements before settling with Algiers. At the end of her secondary studies, during which it is impassioned for Egyptology, Maria Manton falls ill during more than one year, must give up starting higher learning and starts to draw. Attending of 1936 to 1942 the courses of drawing then the workshop of painting of the School of the Art schools, it meet there in 1941 Louis Nallard, which it marries in 1944, Marcel Bouqueton and Marcel Fiorini, with which it exposes in 1942, Robert Martin, which will direct later the gallery of avant-garde “Hill” to Oran, then the painter Georges Ladrey. In 1946 it exposes once again with Bouqueton and takes part in the exposure “Young people pictorial tendencies” organized by Gaston Diehl.

In 1947 Maria Manton and Nallard, with Fiorini, leave Algiers for the Paris region. As of their arrival they discover the work of Roger Bissière, are not long in sharing its friendship and that, with Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer, of Roger Chastel. From 1948 Maria Manton exposes in group to the gallery Colette Allendy then to that of Lydia Conti where its works côtoient those of Hans Hartung, Gerard Schneider, Pierre Soulages, and with the Salon of New Realities. Maria Manton presents in 1949 her paintings to Algiers with Nallard and Bouqueton to the “Golden section” animated by the poet Jean Sénac. She carries out her first personal exposures to Paris in 1950 and 1952, with Amsterdam in 1951, Antwerp in 1952. Established in Paris even, Maria Manton and Nallard assume as from 1950, for three years, the management of the hotel of the Old man-Dovecote, near Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, which attend of many artists after their spectacle: among the tenants, Serge Poliakoff, which earns its living while playing of the balalaïka in the Russian restaurants, Sydney Bechet, Robert Hossein, the sculptor César, the writer Kateb Yacine.

In 1953 Maria Manton and Nallard remain in Algiers. Edmond Charlot, first editor of Albert Camus, presents paintings of Maria Manton to it to the gallery “Shores” and Sénac exposes it to the sides in particular Baya, Bouqueton, Nallard and Jean de Maisonseul under the sign of the review “Terraces” which it founded. Maria Manton exposes then regularly to Paris with the gallery Arnaud (1954, 1957) then with “the Wheel” (1956, 1961,1965,1969,1970). With the length of the Years 1950 Maria Manton and Nallard become acquainted with the Algerian painters, in particular Abdelkader Guermaz, Me hamed Issiakhem, Mohammed Khadda, bind particularly with Abdallah Benanteur and Mohamed Aksouh. For the summer they find the Mediterranean with Peñiscola, village of the Spanish coast which also Bouqueton or Sénac attends. Maria Manton and Nallard direct later on, from the associative point of view, “the Gallery”, that they open to the young painters, and lengthily animate the Living room of New Realities whose Maria Manton became the general secretary in 1961.

Maria Manton carries out thereafter a dozen personal exposures to Paris but also, regularly, to Amsterdam with the gallery De Boër, and takes part in about fifty collective exposures in Europe. From 1985 to 1992 the gallery Callu Mérite organizes in Paris four rétrospectves its paintings of the Années 1950. The day before the exposure “Mother Algeria” organized by the Museum of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, in which it takes part with in particular Aksouh, Bouqueton, Guermaz, Manessier, Nallard, Hamid Tibouchi, Maria Manton dies out in Paris in August 2003. .

Work

Attracted as of its beginnings by Matisse and the color, Directs and construction, Maria Manton painted " of the portraits, dead natures and the compositions where the chromatic vehemence of the deer is harmoniously ordered by an invoice approaching the attempts cubists " , written in 1946 Jean Sénac. On its arrival in 1947 in Paris it engages in nona figuration which a short stay accentuates that it carries out in Algiers in 1949: " I was suddenly shocked by the light. (...) I then started to break the form; it is from there that I became frankly abstract " , Maria Manton will entrust.

The examination of its Gouache S like its very large sizes painted on Isorel, carries out it, until 1953, in the way of a rigorous abstraction. In its constructions the surfaces balanced in quiet flat tints, whose significant graphics underlines the borders, imbricate the ones in the others while their very coloured ranges initially slip towards colder tonalities, exploiting the blacks and gray, bronzes, sands and the grounds.

In 1953 the redécouverte by Maria Manton of the grounds and the lights of Algeria then a voyage in Germany in 1955 have as a repercussion an easing of the structures of its works. In drama series which it entitles destroyed Villes , the vision of Berlin and especially of Cologne make it slip towards a more abstract art. From the Years 1960 ochers, the brown ones, the blacks yield in its paintings the place to blue luminous, with the pinks and lilacs.

" While joining again with its Mediterranean origins, it finds the light on which its works open consequently. (...) Its painting is released and based less and less on the geometrical diagrams. She does not fear to let emerge a recognizable element, but it is only one chance, in the play of the correspondences where she wants to suggest us white sections of wall, veils, sand, in an ocher symphony, the brown ones, pinks awaked by red, brown, blue spots ".

Many thus as from the Seventies the titles of its fabrics are in which Maria Manton evokes her voyages with Nallard in Spain then in Egypt, origin from 1978 of a long continuation, in Italy, particularly with Venice, and in Cappadoce. Colors, lights and reasons there suggest indistinctly, more than natural landscapes, architectural elements or reasons for the Mediterranean, silhouettes of boats or palate, the shapes of arcades, colorings of frontages or gardens. Contrary to any anecdotic description, the significant allusion that made Maria Manton through tons there hot and of the nervous lines is rather that " of an atmosphere, of a feeling of freshness or heat which becomes like palpable for the spectator ".

Judgment

“The roots of Maria Manton which, crossing the periods and the successive topics of its paintings, found the unit of it, they are not the anecdotic aspects of native Algeria or Egypt met later. Its roots, more deeply, they are the light, the skin of the ground and the walls, the scents of the South, other shore of the Mediterranean.”

Jacques Drank, Editions Gründ, Paris, 1990

Museums

Works of Maria Manton are in particular preserved in the collections of the National museum of modern art of Paris, of the Musée of modern art of the Town of Paris, of the National museum of Algiers, the National museum of Budapest, the Museum of Duren in Germany, the Museum of Gajac de Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

See too

References

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