SALE IN ONE LOT OF THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE WORKSHOP OF Ma - Lot 1

SALE IN ONE LOT OF THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE WORKSHOP OF Marcel LEFORT Around 350 paintings in all formats and around 300 works on paper (drawings, watercolors, gouaches). A student at the École des Beaux-arts in Poitiers from the age of 15, Marcel Lefort apprenticed as a decorative painter with Louis Dinet before moving on to house painting. War broke out at the age of 19. He obtained false papers and joined the Deschamps family farm in Archigny, then his farm in Scorbé-Clairvaux, in the hamlet of La Besserie, where he became a farmhand. He then joined the Resistance. He worked as a farmhand, staying in the guardhouse pavilion at the Château de Clairvaux. But the former Beaux-Arts graduate couldn't resist his pencils. "One day, I got the idea of sketching Hitler as a frail, disconsolate little man trembling in the face of the Russian offensive. A humorous touch, not entirely to the taste of the Kommandantur then stationed at the château. "I had put the drawing on my mantelpiece to make my farmer laugh. The soldiers found it, and we all risked being shot," Marcel Lefort recalls. His day-to-day life was complemented by another activity: that of liaison officer in the "Marie-Odile" resistance network, with whom he helped to exfiltrate British airmen from the village of Scorbé, where they were hidden, to Draché in the Indre-et-Loire region. After the war, the painter-decorator returned to his craft, giving his first drawing lessons to students at the Châtellerault art school. "It was love at first sight. I wanted to make a career out of it, but to do that, I had to go abroad. (Éric Mariault for Centre Presse) Marcel Lefort was born in Châtellerault, and studied at the Beaux-Arts in Poitiers, as well as decorative painting. He was a teacher at the Ecole d'Arts Plastiques de Châtellerault. He has received numerous awards and distinctions for his work and teaching.