Antoine Mayo (1905-1990) Seated Figure

Antoine MAYO (1905-1990) Seated figure, oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm, signed lower right.
Mayo, whose real name was Antoine Malliarakis, was a Greek painter of French culture (naturalized French in the last years of his life), born on February 15, 1905 in Port Said and died on October 1, 1990 in Seine-Port.
A friend of Prévert and Desnos, he is generally classified as a surrealist, a movement in which he actively participated without ever officially joining it, and also known for his work as a set designer and costume designer on masterpieces such as Les Enfants du paradis, Casque d'or or Hiroshima mon amour.
In 2012, the art historian Evelyne Yeatman-Eiffel published the catalogue raisonné of his work. From 19 Oct 2016 to 16 Jan 2017, two of Mayo's paintings are part of the major exhibition "Art and Freedom: Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)" at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, an exhibition that will also be repeated at the Tate Gallery.