Alley Of Baobabs In Morondava - André Maire - Gouache On Paper Signed And Dated 1959 - Africa

André Maire (1898 - 1984) Born in Paris. He took classes at the Place des Vosges art school at a very young age. At fifteen he met Emile Bernard, of whom he became a private pupil. Traveling painter par excellence, his long artistic life is punctuated by the many stays he makes in southern Europe, Asia, Africa and Madagascar. He made several stays in Indochina where he taught in Saigon from 1919 to 1921, then led a teaching mission from 1948 to 1958 where he settled in Dalat and followed the course of the Mekong through Laos and Cambodia. In the meantime, thanks to a scholarship, he visited French West Africa in 1945. In 1959 a new scholarship brought him to Madagascar. He also discovered the West Indies in 1968. He produced countless drawings, wash drawings, gouaches, oils with a predilection for monumental architecture, whether that of the grandiose remains of Egypt, India or Angkor or that of the Asian forests and their fauna. He cares little to restore the accuracy of his models but through his idealized compositions he perfectly captures the atmosphere of the place to express all its aesthetics.