Maurice Estève was a French painter known for his lyrical experiments with colorful interwoven forms. Inspired by the art of Paolo Uccello, Nicolas Poussin, and Paul Cézanne, Estève merged his love of art history with abstraction. “I never use a sketch, painting directly on the canvas, without a preparatory drawing,” he once said. “Each work is a series of transformations.” Born on May 2, 1904 in Culan, France, he was mostly self-taught but also attended the Académie Colarossi in Paris during the 1920s. Here, he was exposed to the paintings of the Cubists as well as those of Robert Delaunay. Along with his watercolor paintings, Estève also worked extensively with lithography, textile...