Miró, Calder, Giacometti, Braque: Aimé Maeght and His Artists
Royal Academy, until 2 January 2009
The role played by dealers in modern French art seems to exceed that of their English counterparts. Perhaps this is because the French were more bombastic and self-serving, but we remember the names of the great dealers such as Vollard or Durand-Ruel. Actually, I think it is because they played a crucial role in the nurturing of the artists they represented which was perhaps more personal and involved than the subtle and retiring English. Aimé Maeght (1906–81) was just such a dealer who, ably supported by his wife Marguerite (1909–77), founded a commercial art gallery in the dark days towards the end of the second world war. He had trained as a master lithographer at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, and so knew the art game as an insider. In 1936 he and his wife had set up Arte, a printing studio and advertising agency in Cannes, which also sold radios and modern furniture designed by Aimé.
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