AIME MAEGHT AND HIS ARTISTS review by Phillip Worth
AIME MAEGHT AND HIS ARTISTS Royal Academy of Art, Sackler Wing Till 2nd January 2009 This exhibition is concerned mainly with the work of four artists: Joan Miro, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti and Georges Braque. All are ‘stars’ of the Aime Maeght Foundation near St. Paul de Vence in the South of France, an extraordinary institution which is part gallery, part museum, part workshops and part printing and publishing house, conceived and driven to completion in 1964 by the art dealer cum art lover cum visionary cum entrepreneur Aime Maeght. Maeght did not simply collect the work of modern artists, he befriended them, gave them gallery and studio space and, above all, expanded their creative outlets by way of introducing them to printing techniques, notably lithography, and book production and publication. He held one man exhibitions at the Foundation (as well as at his gallery in Paris), and for each of these produced a catalogue illustrated by the exhibiting artist. A man for all