Maurice Estève was a French painter known for his lyrical experiments with colorful interwoven forms. Inspired by the art of Paolo Uccello, Nicolas Poussin, and Paul Cézanne, Estève merged his love of art history with abstraction. “I never use a sketch, painting directly on the canvas, without a preparatory drawing,” he once said. “Each work is a series of transformations.” Born on May 2, 1904 in Culan, France, he was mostly self-taught but also attended the Académie Colarossi in Paris during the 1920s. Here, he was exposed to the paintings of the Cubists as well as those of Robert Delaunay. Along with his watercolor paintings, Estève also worked extensively with lithography, textile design, and murals. In 1959, he took part at II. documenta in Kassel, and in 1970 received the Grand Prix National des Arts. The artist donated a large collection of his work to the city of Bourges, France, where the Estève Museum opened in 1987. Estève settled back in his hometown of Culan in 1995, where he died at the age of 97, on June 29, 2001. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others