MIRO - 1961 ORIGINAL LITHOGRAPH - MOURLOT - 5 COLORS

Aime Maeght: (pronounced mahg)

Aimé Maeght, (see b/w photos) the orphaned son of a railroad employee, was born in 1906 in northern France. At the age of 8, he went to live in southern France. The whole family relocated near Nîmes where he went to school. He became a lithograph designer.

All his life he rejected the idea of being an art vendor. He considered himself a lithographer, journalist or printer.

In 1927, he married a woman from Cannes: Marguerite. They had two sons, Adrien et Bernard.  Ten years later Aimé opened a print shop, rue des Belges in Cannes, in which he hung his publications (posters, lithographs). In 1936 he established the Cannes Art Gallery.

His work as a lithograph maker evolves and he started working on advertisment.  He even advised one of his assistant Suzanne Ramié to buy back a small pottery workshop in Vallauris. She did this, and christened it "Madoura", after his nickname; Picasso will join this place to work with her.

So began his second profession, that of art vendor.  In his gallery, he brought exposure to the artists that were his followers: Domergue, Rouault, Bram and Geer Van Velde.

During the second war, he opened a gallery in Nice with Jean Moulin.  Pierre Bonnard and Henry Matisse advised him to open another one in Paris.   He did it in December 1945.  There they greatly increased the number of expositions, and very quickly became interested in art publication.     
 

In 1946, they founded the journal "Behind the Mirror" ("Derrière le Miroir" or DLM).   It was to be the review of the exhibitions. The Maeghts wanted to make an art publication for the general public.  It was a total failure, in spite of authors and artists such as Eluard, Leiris, Char or Chagall, Kandinski, and Mirò.  In order to be able to publish the 4th issue, they had to sell the first three issues by the kilo!
 

Marguerite died 1977, and Aimé in 1981.  (sagaplanet.com)

The late 1960s saw an incredible creative burst from Miró centering on printmaking. Commenting once upon a book that argued that Aimé Maeght was a slave-driver who ordered Miró to produce many prints during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jean Frémon of Galerie Maeght and Galerie Lelong laughed and said that the case was quite the reverse: that Aimé Maeght urgerd Miró not to produce so many lithographs because he feared that the art maarket could not absorb them all. Miró's concession was to agree to spread the publication of these prints out over a number of years but the making went on without a pause.

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