Maurice Loirand: Japanese Garden: French naive outsider folk artist

A perfect painting for lovers of Japan, and of primitive/naive outside art. It is a work by an internationally noted extraordinary artist with an extraordinary life.

Maurice LOIRAND (1922-2008) was born into a working class family in Brittany, near the Atlantic coast coast in France. He starts working as a skilled labourer in the shipyards aged 15. 
Aged 20, when the Nazis start to occupy the country, he joins the Resistance movement, where he meets and befriends thinkers, painters and poets. He is thus introduced to an artistic and intellectual universe far removed from the world of his origins.

Loirand found himself drawn to art, and soon dedicated all his free time to learn how to paint. Completely self taught, he soon began to exhibit his pictures alongside academically trained artists. He moved to Paris in the 1950s, and - while still working as a technician - painted all night. 
He became a full time artist in 1968. International travel and a multitude of exhibitions followed. He exhibited in Brazil, Argentina, and with Jean Tiroche Gallery in New York, among others, his work being shown alongside works by Leger, Matisse and Picasso. The Collector's Guild New York Ltd commissioned Maurice Loirand for several works of lithographic art. 
Loirand discovered Japan in the early 1970s, and decides to stay for 18 years.
He married Kazué SHIMOTORI, a Japanese poet. Only in 1993 did the couple return to Maurice's native France. There, he would continue to paint until his death in 2008. 

Paintings by Loirand are in the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, in the Laval Museum of Naive Art, in the Fine Arts Museum of Nates and in the Anatole Jakovsky Museum of Naive Art in Nice.

They can also be found in national collections in Argentina and Brazil, the National Gallery of Australia, and in several Museums in Japan, such as the Museum Setagaya-ku and the Edo-Tokyo Museum.