Press - Yoyo Maeght - Between Prévert and Picasso
Yoyo Maeght talks about his family and, therefore, pays a beautiful tribute to his “grandpa”
From birth until she was 11, Yoyo Maeght never doubted that she was a foundling. Besides, that's how she was nicknamed in the family. It was, paradoxically, only when she discovered that she was indeed... her parents' child, that doubt crept into her mind. “ But since no one cared, it didn’t bother me that much” she laughs. Yoyo Maeght is like this and has been for a long time: to serious things, she opposes a radiant smile, which says, in essence, that all of that, deep down, has so little importance compared to life... Hers was sweet , she doesn't hide it.
Even if she emphasizes that never, despite the comfort and luxury in which she and her sisters were raised - as children, they went, for example, to lunch in a Rolls, at the Coupole, like adults -, she never did not feel abnormal. “ It was simply my life, ” she says.
Where, in the crazy carefreeness of the 50s and 70s, we meet all the important people in the art world. Miro, Prévert, César, Picasso, Braque and many others. Yoyo's grandfather, Aimé Maeght, is one of the most famous art collectors and dealers in France. It was he, too, who had this brilliant idea of a foundation dedicated to contemporary violists, in Saint-Paul de Vence, where we find Yoyo and his turbulent playmates. And it is around this man that she so loved that Yoyo articulated his book of memories, patiently assembled like a puzzle, now complete. “Otherwise, I would not have published this text,” she says again.
IN SAINT-PAUL DE VENCE , therefore, Yoyo hurtles down the alleys with a group of children of celebrities; she meets Montand, Ventura, Reggiam, relatives of her parents and grandparents, "there is a little side of button war in this group of kids left to their own devices, she emphasizes. All our parents were Except that it was the Trente Glorieuses, so a lot of money, so no constraints We had whole tables of kids from 7 to 12 years old at the restaurant, without asking our parents. That, today, that. is no longer possible And then, the children are stuck in front of their computers and we can't complain about that. Today all the houses have swimming pools. At the time, there were two in Saint-Paul. and everyone was there! But I'm not nostalgic for that time, I know I was lucky to experience it."
Cuddled by exceptional beings
Prévert, Malraux, Chagall or Miró: these celebrities, these immense artists, for Yoyo, were above all grandpa's friends, the ones who make you jump on their knees, listen to your little children's worries, cuddle you when you have a sad heart . “Compared to them, non-exceptional people are very insipid,” she says, when it is pointed out to her that she sometimes has a grudge against certain ghosts from her childhood. “I could have just said nice things,” she concedes. But it's not in his nature.
If Yoyo evolves like a little butterfly, gathering knowledge and beauty at each encounter, however at school, among her friends she is "very unhappy"
“Fortunately I had my two sisters at recess, because the other children, I didn't have much to say to them. When you have a Chagall on the walls where there is a blue goat and an Eiffel Tower which plays the violin, you suffer from hearing your little friends - and their parents - say Oh what a horror.
" Publisher, but also masterful gallery owner, Yoyo Maeght is delighted to have inherited from her grandfather a great capacity for resilience. "He experienced tragedies, but he made something positive out of them. It's hard for me too to get down... Today, I've cut ties with my family and I feel free."Y.M.
Interview: Isabelle Monnart
blupro