Jean Pierre De Maria Biography
Jeanne Pierre De Maria (1896 - 1984) was born in Paris in 1896 and died in Orleans in 1984. He was a Franco-Swiss painter close to the surrealists, initially graduating from the National School of Arts and Crafts. The war with its atrocities marks his memory. Initially, he worked creating sets for avant-garde theater companies. At the same time he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1923 where he obtained an honorary prize in the modern painting section. Architect and decorator, he was part of the Art Déco movement. Close to the cubists, in the Paris of the roaring twenties, De Maria met Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi and the group of surrealists with whom he sympathized without joining. He began a period of technical research and collage as evidenced by his first exhibition of gouaches-collées in Paris in 1927. His career begins with his machinist period, so there is a thematic recurrence of machines in his painting. In 1958, his second exhibition in Paris, Galerie JC de Chaudun, marked the beginning of recognition by his contemporaries, his friends and the Parisian artistic community. In parallel with solo exhibitions, he regularly supplies canvases for the Salon d'Automne, the Salon de Mai and the Salon Comparaison. In 1964, the discovery of Pierre De Maria by the gallery owner Iris Clert gave new impetus to his career; following this meeting, an intense collaboration is established which allows the painter to benefit from the gallery owner's European and international network. In his painting, violence has given way to humor since the 1980s. Cars don't scare him anymore, he makes fun of them. In 1980 a retrospective of his works took place in Marseille at the Center Méditerranéen d'Art Contemporain, which was his last solo exhibition.
