Press - KNIFE PAINTING - Le Figaro

“THE MAEGHT SAGA”, BY YOYO MAEGHT (ROBERT LAFFONT).

When your name is “Yoyo” – aka Françoise – you should expect to experience some ups and downs. But at this point, it's dizzying. After her birth, in January 1959, her parents, Adrien and Raule, made her believe that she was a foundling; it will teach him to be so helpful. There are better beginnings in life. Yet she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. His grandfather, Aimé -papy -, an art dealer, is a successful gallery owner. Publisher, collector, from Matisse to Giacometti, from Bonnard to Chagall, this visionary made his fortune by exhibiting artists from the new world. In 1947, he brought together the enfant terribles of surrealism. “Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be,” says the catalog. Yoyo and his sisters, Isa and Flo, play miniature dishes at Braque's house, learn to watch birds with Miro. But we are not with the Countess of Ségur: they receive no education. Left to their own devices, abandoned by their parents like brushwood, they grow from Paris to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in a picture whose fantasy is only appearance. At odds with his father, Adrien collects beautiful cars. Aimé lost his other son, Bernard. To ease his grief, he created a foundation. He puts all his genius and his money into it. The prodigious place was inaugurated by Malraux in July 1964. That was fifty years ago. Sad birthday. The candles are dead. After the glory days, it's the dark period. The “transmitter of light” described by his dazzled granddaughter died in 1981. The war of succession was merciless. More torn than a canvas, Yoyo describes vultures, stabbings, jealousy. It's knife painting. In October 2009, receiving her Legion of Honor from Frédéric Mitterrand, the eldest Maeght paid tribute to “her beloved family: Aimé, Marguerite, Adrien, my super sisters, Flo and Yoyo, my brother, Julien”. The varnish exploded. The color of money is definitely not the color of happiness.

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