Hungarian painting decorates the French President’s office

The official photographer of the French President posted a photo of the president’s office on Instagram, and Kálmán Makláry immediately noticed the Hungarian painting hanging above his desk, 444.hu reports. The painting titled Écriture rose was painted by Hungarian-born artist Simon Hantai.

Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron has been serving as President of France since 14 May 2017. He was previously Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs from 2014 to 2016. The president’s photographer posted a photo of the president’s office on Instagram, and there it was, hanging above his desk, a beautiful painting. That painting, Écriture rose, is the work of Hungarian-born painter Simon Hantai.

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Simon Hantai was a French-Hungarian conceptual artist and painter, and he is one of the most well-known Hungarian artists abroad.

Hantai was born in Bia, Hungary, in 1922. He attended the Budapest School of Fine arts. Later, he moved to France, then became a French citizen in 1966. He lived and worked in France until his death in 2008.

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Artnet.com writes that:

“During the 1960s, he developed a signature method of folding canvas and covering it in paint, which when opened revealed a distinctive pattern of color and negative space: a technique he called “pliage,” or folding.”

The painting belongs to the Simon Hantai Exhibition of the Pompidou Center, which houses the largest museum for modern art in Europe.  The Élysée Palace (the official residence of the President of France) most likely borrowed the painting from the Pompidou Center, and that is how it ended up decorating the president’s office.

444.hu writes that one of Hantai’s paintings was sold for over 4 million Euros two years ago, which is the highest amount of money ever paid for a Hungarian or Hungarian-born artist’s piece of work.

Today, Hantai’s works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest.

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Featured image: Instagram @soazigdelamoissonniere

Source: www.444.hu; www.artnet.com; Wikipedia