Maurice Estève was largely self-educated, having only attended the free studio of the Académie Colarossi in 1924, where he tried to constructively implement of his motifs according to the model of Georges Braque and Fernand Léger, thus creating a kind of Cubist Fauvism.
He worked as assistant to Robert Delaunay on huge decorative panels for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition.
Has made a number of watercolors and collages, and designed stained glass in 1957 for a church at Berlincourt in the Bernese Jura.
Estève avoided the extrovert circles of Avant-garde but still belonged to the core of the artists who brought about the breakthrough of École de Paris after 1945.
His œuvre, just like the works of his art colleagues Riopelle and Bazaine, established a new pictorial language: Lyrical abstractions with the aim of depicting form and color with an almost poetic attitude.