Maurice Boitel

He was born in Tillières-sur-Avre, Eure département, in Normandy, from a Picard lawyer father, a member of the Saint Francis third order, and from a Parisian mother, of Burgundian ancestry.

He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Dijon before fighting in a mountain light infantry platoon at the beginning of World War II.

He successfully sat the competitive examination to enter the National Academy of Fine Arts École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris).

In 1942 and 1943, during the most difficult period of the German occupation, in his studio located in the center of Paris he hid Jewish refugees, among them the journalist Henry Jelinek.

He was the guest of honor in several exhibitions of painting like: Rosny-sous-Bois (1980), Blois (1983), Wimereux (1984), Villeneuve-le-Roi (1984), Yvetot (1986), Alfortville (1987), Bourges (1987), Saumur (1987), Metz (1991), Limoges (1992), Tours (1992).

Among his closest friends were the painters Daniel du Janerand, Gabriel Deschamps, Louis Vuillermoz, Pierre-Henry, André Vignoles, Pierre Gaillardot, Rodolphe Caillaux, Jean-Pierre Alaux, Bernard Buffet, André Hambourg, Emilio Grau Sala, Jean Carzou, Paul Collomb, composer Henri Dutilleux, and the two brothers Ramon and Antoni Pitxot.

The Paris area, where he usually resided, also provided him many subjects (Montmartre, the Bois de Vincennes, islands of the Seine river, the Marne, Guermantes and Conches-sur-Gondoire ).