Utirllo Maurice

B. Paris, 1883 - d. Paris, 1935

Place du Tertre, oil on canvas Place du Tertre, oil on canvas Maurice Utrillo, a French master of the early 20th century, took up painting in an attempt to cure himself of alcoholism on the advice of his mother, Suzanne Valodon, a painter of importance herself. In 1909, following seven years of hard work, Utrillo attained his own unmistakable style of simplified, firm construction and quiet, lyrical color. He became an ardent chronicler of bohemian and proletarian Paris, its solitude, and emotional emptiness. The work of Utrillo, an original, poetic master, does not fit into any style and resists all categorization.