Maurice-elie Sarthou (1911 – 1999) “bassin d'Arcachon” Hst Signed And Titled On The Back 60x73 Cm

Maurice-Elie SARTHOU (Bayonne 1911 – Paris 1999) “Arcachon Basin” Oil on canvas signed lower left and titled on the back 60 x 73 cm. Circa 1945. Visible cracks. Bio: His friend Picasso called him “the painter of light”. A member of the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris, Maurice-Elie Sarthou (1911-1999) composed landscapes of great sensuality – beaches, ponds and splendid fires – mixing figuration and abstraction. After studying at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and then Paris, he moved to Bordeaux in 1937 and became a member of the Société des Indépendants Bordelais, which regularly organized exhibitions of Parisian artists (Bissière, Lhote, etc.). Artistic emulation allowed him to assert his style, rather realistic at the beginning of his career, a period during which he liked to paint the Basque coast and the Arcachon basin (1937-1950). Sarthou moved to Paris in 1950, where he was appointed drawing teacher at the Lycée Henri-IV, which allowed him to exhibit in the capital's salons and gain greater recognition. François Desnoyer, whom he met in 1951 at the Salon de Mai, introduced him to the Parisian dealer Marcel Guiot, with whom a friendship was established; from 1955, Sarthou exhibited his new works very regularly in Marcel Guiot's gallery, to which he remained loyal. This did not prevent numerous other private exhibitions in France and abroad. He also participated in numerous salons: Salon de Mai; Salon d'Automne which paid tribute to Sarthou in 1979; Salon Comparisons; Painters Witnesses of Their Time; The Group of 109; The Grand Prix of the Menton Biennale; The Yvelines Biennale, etc. In 1952, he settled in Sète. In 1958, he gave up teaching drawing to devote himself solely to his painting. In 1961, Jean-Albert Cartier organized an exhibition "Ten French Painters Around Jacques Villon" at the Palais de la Méditerranée in Nice. This exhibition was presented in particular at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy, Tours and Luxembourg. In Arles, he met Michel Tournier who wrote several texts about him including a preface for the exhibition at the Findlay Gallery in New York in 1974. In 1966, he illustrated Regards sur la mer by Paul Valéry, then in 1967 Le Bateau ivre by Arthur Rimbaud. In 1972, on September 25, filming began for FR3 Toulouse on Sarthou or the Painter of the Elements, directed by Josée Dayan. In 1976, he was part of the French delegation for the traveling exhibition in Japan "Selection of the Paris Autumn Salon "Contemporary Masters". His plane trip through the pole inspired a new theme: the ice floe. In 1977, at the inauguration of the Centre Georges-Pompidou, one of the preparatory washes for his painting Les Dunes (1971), acquired by the State, was exhibited in the drawing room. Maurice-Élie Sarthou creates sensory painting; he is at the crossroads of figuration and abstraction. In the preface to the Sarthou exhibition at the Paul-Valéry Museum in Sète in 1973, it is written: "From Villon's work, he retained the essential: the lyrical vision of nature, expressed by a colored geometry, derived from Orphism and the Golden Section. Villon also loved his painting very much: he told me so on several occasions and I am happy to testify to it... Picasso said: "It takes a long time to become young." Sarthou was lucky enough to experience or rediscover the fire of adolescence at an age when others are becoming ossified. He has its spontaneity and ardor, without the clumsiness. Instinct, no doubt, arouses the gushes, the spurts, the stripes, the snot of paint that sometimes make his paintings resemble the most beautiful successes of gestural tachism, but instinct would not be enough. Here comes the reference - distant, intuitive, but constant - to nature.