Biography
Maximilien Luce was a French neo-impressionist painter, draughtsman and lithographer, and libertarian activist.
In 1876, he joined the studio of Eugène Froment, who produced woodcuts for L’Illustration, and continued his studies as a painter at the Académie Suisse.
He used the technique of pointillism, developed by Georges Seurat.
Coming from the working class world of the Montparnasse district, Maximilien Luce had witnessed the repression of the Commune and this terrible vision conditioned his political commitment. Considered “dangerous” by the police, especially because of his participation in the newspaper Le Père Peinard and following the assassination of Sadi Carnot on 24 June 1894 by Casério, he was arrested on 6 July and then imprisoned in Mazas prison, from where he was released the following August. However, he took advantage of this episode to produce numerous illustrations on prison life, which were collected in an album entitled Mazas.
