Aimée Moreau French, 1926-2023

Aimée Moreau, born in Paris in 1926, lived and worked in the Lignon district near Geneva until her passing in 2023. Throughout her life, she created a unique and autonomous visual universe, drawing inspiration from the everyday objects around her, through an approach influenced by New Objectivity.  Coming from a bourgeois background, she grew up in Paris, where, at the age of 16, she attended the Académie de Montmartre and the Grande Chaumière.

 

From 1945 to 1948, she studied painting at the École Paul Colin, an institution led by a master of graphic design and posters. During this time, she adopted the spatula as her main tool and developed a style oscillating between figuration and abstraction. After her studies, she moved to Switzerland, where her husband, Michel Kervaire, was completing his PhD in mathematics in Zurich. In 1956, the family relocated to Boston, and then to New York in 1959, where they lived until 1971. It was in New York that she made a significant shift in her art, fully dedicating herself to painting and turning her focus to still lives.

 

What intrigued her most were everyday objects, often considered mundane, such as colored plastic bottles, rubber gloves, children's toys, and empty cans, which she depicted with meticulous attention. Through her precise technique, these objects take on a new dimension, acquiring an unexpected beauty and a distinct visual force. The compositions of Aimée Moreau are based on meaningful relationships between objects, which intertwine to create complex spaces where light, shadows, and reflections play a crucial role.

 

Far from simply depicting utilitarian items, she endows them with a new presence, almost abstract in nature. Each painting becomes a space where light, form, color, and space meet in a poetic harmony. This approach lends her works a profound stillness and an almost timeless serenity. Silence becomes a structuring element in her paintings, materializing in each object: a bottle, a jug, an electric bulb. This silence is not imposed; it arises naturally from the image itself, creating a deep and thoughtful visual experience.

 

Through her still lives, Aimée Moreau succeeds in breathing life into seemingly inanimate objects, transforming them into true living paintings. Her still lives thoughtfully explores the beauty in everyday objects.