Collection: Papart Max

(Marseille 1911 - Paris 1994)

Max Papart, a French artist, created lithographs, engravings, etchings, and paintings, often using mixed techniques and collage, with a very evocative personal style.
He studied for a short time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, his hometown, but the difficult economic situation of his family forced him to leave school, though not his education, which he continued as a self-taught artist in his free time, drawing inspiration from the great authors of the past, whom he could admire in museums.
He settled in Paris where he began working as an engraver and printer, a job that became the foundation of his entire artistic production, consisting of lithographs, etchings, aquatints, and collages, in which he became a great master. A sensitive and committed intellectual, he illustrated the works of several poets such as Jacques Prévert and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and began to exhibit regularly in important galleries and museums.
In the second half of the 1950s, also thanks to his meeting with César Baldaccini, Henri Goetz, Jean-Michel Atlan, James Coignard, Antoni Clavé, artists who chose the south of France as their home, Papart shifted from a post-Cubist language to an artistic expression that drew some plastic syntheses from abstract art to ultimately develop a very evocative personal style, fresh and immersive, which led him to international success, exhibiting not only in Europe but also in Canada and the United States.