Maurice Gontard’s childhood (he was born in 1940), is spent between the Erdre and the Loire. He completes his training in his hometown of Nantes in 195, at the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. 1962 is the beginning of a twelve-years stint in Aix-en-Provence, were he works in advertising and paints posters for the Marseille movie theatre, while he begins to show some of his work in galleries.
Gontard moves to Paris in 1975, and after a rather difficult adaptation, he enters the art gallery circuit in 1977, and participates the following year to Venice’s biennial exhibition. Due in great part to the window on world offered by his passage in Venice, his gallery exhibits – in France and abroad - become more frequent, and the artists notoriety increases to such an extent that, as of 1988 he is listed in Twentieth Century Art encyclopaedias.
Reminiscent of his childhood, Gontard’s art is fraught with aquatic landscapes in which the brushstroke – vigorous at times, and almost languid at others - and colour evoke, rather than depict, the flora and the elements.
