The work of this woman, "painter of social comedy", stops until 4 November on the birthplace of the artist, born in 1912 in Saint-Quay-Portrieux (Côtes-d'Armor).
Few people know the painting of Marie-Thérèse Auffray (1912-1990). The painter, born in Saint-Quay-Portrieux, where an exhibition is currently dedicated to him, has long remained in the shadows.
Rediscovered by the purchasers of 344 of his paintings, at three auctions in the Orne shortly after his death, Marie-Thérèse Auffray remains an enigma.
This unclassifiable painter has scarcely frequented Brittany beyond childhood. It was in Paris, where her family moved when her father died when she was eight years old, that her early skills in drawing and painting were noticed. She rubs shoulders painters, writers and sculptors, then studies at the Beaux-Arts and lives by creating advertising posters.
Like the frivolous painter Vlaminck, with whom she will develop a friendship after the war, Marie-Thérèse Auffray portrays "the human comedy with a virulent irony. Stripping portraits, without complacency, which have shaken the sleep of the world, " wrote Marie-Jo Bonnet, art historian.
In Normandy, André Vinclair chairs an association that strives to ensure that the painter's work is no longer dispersed. He talks about his feeling when he first discovered the paintings: "It was a shock. This work has transported us. Since we are trying to understand why she came out of all radars. "
This woman is a free personality, assuming her homosexuality in a Norman village, during the war. In 1941, when she began to be recognized in Parisian artistic circles, she chose to settle in Échauffour, the Orley village where her partner, Noëlle Guillou lives.
The inn held by the two resistant and the Parisian workshop of Marie-Therese used to hide Allied airmen, before exfiltrating them out of reach of the Nazis. After the war, she combines the inn with her work as a painter. It commits itself to the municipal council in the opposition of left. Always a contender, she adheres to the CGT, to free thinkers, in a Masonic lodge. She exhibits a lot in Paris, at the Salon des Independants in particular, corresponds with Simone de Beauvoir ...
In the 1970s, financial difficulties forced him to sell his Parisian studio. Marie-Therese is anxious to preserve her work, hoping to unite her one day in one place.
This day is perhaps not far today, thanks to the energy that the owners of his paintings, gathered in the association MTA, and the cousins costarmoricains of the painter Claude and Daniel Tarin put there who are also committed to bringing it out of oblivion.
At the Saint-Quay-Portrieux Convention Center (Côtes-d'Armor) until November 4 from 11 am to 7 pm. Free entry. Website: www.mariethereseauffray.word-press.com