Les Goudes 1954

This is Maurice Esteve’s “Les Goudes,” and it’s all about shapes and colour in conversation. Look at how he’s put this together – the yellows, oranges, blues, and greens create a sense of harmony, like a jazzy chord. I imagine Esteve stepping back, squinting, and then diving back in, turning shapes, shifting colours. What was he thinking? Maybe something like, “How can these forms play off each other? How can these colours make each other sing?” See how the orange sits next to the blue? That’s not accidental; it’s like he’s turning up the volume. It reminds me of Matisse, you know, that same love for colour. But Esteve's doing his own thing, with these soft, almost dreamlike shapes. Artists, we’re always talking to each other, across time and space. And painting is like a way of figuring things out, a messy, beautiful experiment that never really ends.