Maria MANTON

Biography

Maria Manton (1910-2003) was a French non-figurative painter of the New School of Paris.

She was born on 4 December 1910 in Blida (Algeria). During the German occupation of Alsace in 1870, her maternal grandparents came to live in the vicinity of the town. Originally from Tarbes, his father was a career military officer and for about ten years the family followed his movements before settling in Algiers. At the end of her secondary education, during which she became fascinated by Egyptology, Maria Manton fell ill for more than a year, had to give up her higher education and began to draw. From 1936 to 1942, she attended drawing classes and then the painting workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, where she met Louis Nallard in 1941, whom she married in 1944, Marcel Bouqueton and Sauveur Galliéro, with whom she exhibited in 1942, Robert Martin, who later directed the Colline avant-garde gallery in Oran, and the painter Georges Ladrey. In 1946 she had her first solo exhibition and participated in the Jeunes tendances picturales exhibition organised by Gaston Diehl.

In 1947, Maria Manton and Nallard, with Marcel Fiorini, leave Algiers for the Paris region. As soon as they arrived, they discovered the work of Roger Bissière and soon shared his friendship and that of Roger Chastel in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. From 1948 onwards, Maria Manton exhibited as a group at the Colette Allendy Gallery and then at the Lydia Conti Gallery, where her works were exhibited alongside those of Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider and Pierre Soulages, and at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. She held her first solo exhibitions in Paris in 1950 and 1952, in Amsterdam in 1951 and in Antwerp in 1952. Established in Paris itself, Maria Manton and Nallard took over the management of the Vieux-Colombier hotel, near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, for three years from 1950 onwards, which many artists frequented after their shows: among the tenants were Serge Poliakoff, who earned his living playing the balalaika in Russian restaurants, Herman Braun-Vega, who had just arrived from Peru1 , Sidney Bechet, Robert Hossein, the sculptor César, and the writer Kateb Yacine.

In 1953, Maria Manton and Nallard stayed in Algiers. Edmond Charlot, Albert Camus' first publisher, presented Maria Manton's paintings at the "Rivages" gallery and Jean Sénac exhibited her alongside Baya, Bouqueton, Nallard and Jean de Maisonseul under the banner of the review "Terrasses" which he had founded. Maria Manton then exhibited regularly in Paris at the Arnaud Gallery (1954, 1957) and then at "La Roue" (1956, 1961, 1965, 1969, 1970). Throughout the 1950s, Maria Manton and Nallard got to know Algerian painters, notably Abdelkader Guermaz, M'hamed Issiakhem, Mohammed Khadda, and became particularly close to Abdallah Benanteur and Mohamed Aksouh. For the summer they returned to the Mediterranean in Peñiscola, a village on the Spanish coast that Bouqueton and Sénac also frequented.

Maria Manton and Nallard later ran "La Galerie", which they opened to young painters, and ran the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles for a long time, of which Maria Manton became the general secretary in 1961, assisted by Jeanne Coppel, and where she exhibited from 1947 to 2003.

Maria Manton subsequently held a dozen solo exhibitions in Paris and also regularly in Amsterdam at the De Boër Gallery, and took part in some fifty group exhibitions in Europe. From 1985 to 1992 the Callu Mérite gallery organised four retrospectives of his paintings from the 1950s in Paris.

On the eve of the exhibition "Mère Algérie" organised by the Musée de Gajac (Villeneuve-sur-Lot), in which she participated with, among others, Aksouh, Bouqueton, Guermaz, Manessier, Nallard and Hamid Tibouchi, Maria Manton died in Paris in August 2003.