Aimé Maeght (French pronunciation:[ɛmemaɡ]; 27 April 1906 – 5 September 1981) was a French art dealer, collector, lithographer, and publisher. He founded the Galerie Maeght in Paris[1] and Barcelona, and the Fondation Maeght[2] in Saint-Paul-de-Vence near Nice (southern France). Though the original Flemish pronunciation is pronounced "[maːxt]", the French pronunciation of surname Maeght sounds more similar to mahg.[3]
Art dealer
As a youth, Maeght studied art and music, training as a lithographer at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes.[4] His first commercial encounter in the art world came in 1930, when Pierre Bonnard came to his Cannes shop and had Maeght print a program for a Maurice Chevalier concert with a Bonnard lithograph. After the programs were produced, Maeght put the lithograph in the print-shop window. A quick sale encouraged the artist to give him a second picture. Maeght made his Paris debut as a major art dealer on the Rue de Teheran in 1945, after World War II. On sale were all the paintings done by Henri Matisse during the war.[5] He also represented Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, and Fernand Léger.[2] Much of his success as a dealer was attributed to his wife, Marguerite Maeght.[5]
Aimé Maeght was the founder, editor and publisher of the French art magazineDerrière le Miroir, created in 1946 and published uninterruptedly until 1982.[6] With his wife, Marguerite, he established the Fondation Maeght, a privately funded museum devoted to 20th-century art, in the South of France.[2] The building was designed by the Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, houses more than 12,000 pieces of art and attracts "on average, 200,000 visitors ... every year".[2]
