André Minaux

Biografia
1923 - 1986

Sul l'artista

André Minaux (Paris, 1923 - Touquin, 1986) was a French painter, sculptor, illustrator, engraver and lithographer and belongs to the 'École de Paris'.

As a child he visited exhibitions with his father and painted together on Sundays.

André Minaux was educated at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and was a student of Maurice Brianchon and Roland Oudot.

Minaux was a member of the artists' group 'Jeune Peinture' in the 1950s and from 1949 he was also part of the 'l'Homme Témoin', founded in 1948.
l'Homme Témoin was a movement of young artists who worked in a style of expressionist social realism as a counter-movement to the prevailing preference for abstract art. Members included Minaux, Bernard Buffet, Bernard Loujou (founder), Paul Rebeyrolle, Yvonne Mottet, Michel Gallard, Simone Dat and others. They mainly painted contemporary realistic scenes in often gloomy colors and black lines. Their movement and style became more and more imitated, which resulted in 1951 in the "Salon des Peintres témoins de leur Temps".

In 1948 Minaux started working with Fernand Mourlot and made several lithographs. Mourlot worked with Picasso, Matisse and Braque, among others. Minaux was initially very shy but Picasso encouraged him, he then worked a lot in black and white, later also with color.
His compositions are powerful, with many black lines.

In 1949 Minaux received the critics' prize at the Salon des Jeunes Peintres. An important prize.
As early as 1950, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris purchased a work by Minaux. In 1952 he also participates in the Venice Biennale.
In 1953, Minaux has a major solo exhibition in London, the Tate Gallery also purchases one of his works.

In addition to his paintings and graphic work, Minaux also illustrates several books, for which he also receives prizes.
In the early 1960s, his fame spread to New York and he gained a lot of international recognition and fame. Several museums are buying his works and Museum d'Unterlinden in Colmar even organizes a permanent exhibition with his work. In the meantime he has also started to work more abstractly, a certain simplification of lines combined with areas of color, as is also the case with this aquatint. Women are a recurring theme in his work, but he also makes still lifes and starts sculpting in the late 1960s. His work can actually be divided into periods, from naturalism to figurative and later also non-figurative.

His work can currently be found in many museums worldwide, including Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Tate Modern in London and Musée d'Unterlinden in Colmar.

All artworks