Portrait
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
With label, n°1/6.
Circa 1980.
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Doubtless a tapestry woven from a work by Hélène Champaloux (with an X !), in a style reminiscent of posters of the 1970’s, featuring a face treated as if by solarization : a very rare subject for a tapestry!
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Faisan feu (Pheasant Fire)
Lurçat’s artistic production was immense : it is however his role as the renovator of the art of tapestry design which ensures his lasting renown. As early as 1917, he started producing works on canvas, then in the 20’s and 30’s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins workshop dates back to 1937, at the same time he discovered the tapestry of the Apocalypse which was essential in his decision to devote himself to tapestry design. He first tackled the technical aspects with François Tabard, then on his installation at Aubusson during the war, he established his technique : broad point, a simplified palette, outlined cartoons with colours indicated by pre-ordained numbers. A huge production then follows (over 1000 cartoons) amplified by his desire to include his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) and the collaboration with the art gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then by his role as a tireless advocate for the medium around the world. His tapestries reveal a pictorial world which is specifically decorative, with a very personal symbolic iconography : cosmogony (the sun, the planets, the zodiac, the four elements…) stylised vegetation, fauna (rams, cocks, butterflies, chimera …) standing out against a background without perspective (voluntarily different from painting) and, in his more ambitious work, designed as an invitation to share in a poetic (he sometimes weaves quotations into his tapestries) and philosophical (the grand themes are broached from the wartime period onwards) vision whose climax is the “Chant du Monde” (Song of the World) (Jean Lurçat Museum , ancien hôpital Saint Jean, Angers) which remained unfinished at his death. This profile of the head of a cockerel appears in various cartoons (« Feux bleus », « la chanson de Roland »,…) : it appears, with its almond-shaped halo, as if in reserve, shining brightly against the black background. The title of this piece allows a play on words with the French “faire feu” an expression meaning to shoot. Bibliography : Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Exhibition Catalogue Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976 Exhibition catalogue Les domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986 Symposium Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie in Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie 1992 Exhibition Catalogue Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992 Exhibition catalogue Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004 Jean Lurçat, le chant du monde Angers 2007 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Exhibition Catalogue Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016Aubusson tapestry woven in the Tabard workshop. With signed label. Circa 1960. -
Fleur de roc (rock flower)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Legoueix workshop. n°2/4. Circa 1970. Originally a sculptor exploiting very diverse materials (steel, concrete, clay…), Borderie came to tapestry with immense enthusiasm in the 1950’s with the weaving of his first cartoon in 1957. Receiving encouragement from Denise Majorel, he was awarded the Grand Prix National de la Tapisserie in 1962. In 1974 he was appointed as director at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs at Aubusson but he resigned from this post shortly thereafter. He designed over 500 painted cartoons, abstracts using simple shapes, shading in a limited palette of colours and weaving with gros points. A dynamic abstraction with a limited colour scheme running from orange to brown, abstract motifs which play on the plastic effect of light passing through the colours : a classic cartoon from André Borderie. Bibliography : Exhibition catalogue André Borderie « pour l’homme simplement », Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine 1998. J.J. et B. Wattel, André Borderie et la tapisserie d'Aubusson, Editions Louvre Victoire, 2018, ill. p.22 -
La cage ouverte (the open cage)
Tapisserie d’Aubusson tissée par l’atelier Berthaut. Avec son bolduc signé de l'artiste. 1953. Jean Picart le Doux is one of the foremost figures in the renaissance of the art of tapestry. His earliest contributions to the field date back to 1943 when he designed cartoons for the passenger ship “la Marseillaise”. A close associate of Lurçat, whose theories he would adopt (limited palette, numbered cartoons...), he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie), and soon after, a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The state gave him several commissions most of them at the Aubusson workshop, and some at the Gobelins : the most spectacular of these being for the University of Caen, the Theatre in Le Mans, the passenger ship France or the Prefecture of the Creuse département ... In as much as Picart le Doux’s aesthetic is close to that of Lurçat, so also is his insipiration and his subject matter, although in a register which is more decorative than symbolic, where he brings together heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars...), the elements, nature (wheat, vines, fish, birds...), man, literary quotation ... Birds are a recurrent motif in the artist’s work in the first half of the 1950’s (“la cage ouverte” the open cage, one of the most successful works of this artist, dates from 1953, Picart le Doux here comes back to the same cartoon but with a few minimal changes), as well as the tongues of flame punctuating the edges of the cage. Added to this is the limited colour scheme which is not a little redolent of traditional foliage. Bibliography : Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972 Exhibition catalogue Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
