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    Jean Lurçat

    A tous vents (Windblown)

          Aubusson tapestry woven in the Tabard workshop. Complete with certificate of origin. 1962-1963.   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.   Spectacular cartoon (27 m2 !) and an exceptional private commission for a specific place (the hall of the patron’s home) that Lurçat received towards the end of his life where he brings together a busy profusion of his signature motifs : sun, stars, butterflies, but also and more rarely, tortoise, cat, .. The correspondance exchanged between Lurçat and his patron reveals his great accessability (at a time when Lurçat, at the height of his fame, is constantly in demand and spends much of his time on the “Chant du Monde”) and the depth of his well-argued reflection in response to the commission : the self-proclaimed “doctor of wools” chooses a yellow background (favoured over black “too solemn for the hall in the home of a young couple”), “the wall covered from end to end ...” “a royal solution” “according to the tradition of great tapestry-making”,... As can be seen, the patron saw no reason to quibble with any of these artistic choices.     Origin : Private collection, Lyon (a copy of the correspondance between Lurçat, the Tabard workshop and the patron will be given to the purchaser)     Bibliography : Exhibition catalogue Jean Lurçat, Tapisseries nouvelles, Maison de la pensée Française, 1956 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 Exhibition Catalogue L'homme et ses lumières, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1992 Symposium Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie in Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie 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
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    Jean BAZAINE

    Composition

        Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop. With label, n°1/1. 1974.   Jean Bazaine, like many of his contemporaries, was a prolific mural artist particularly for large scale edifices. Although he is above all recognised as a designer of stained glass windows and mosaics, he was also making tapestry cartoons as early as the 1930’s. These pieces formed part of the renewal of religious art of which Bazaine would be one of the principal protagonists, particularly after the war.   However, Bazaine’s designs are not all destined to be displayed in a religious context. His mastery of mural art is revealed by commissions for mosaics for the UNESCO building and also for the Maison de la Radio as well as tapestries for the Manufactures Nationales or for Aubusson, for the Palais de Justice in Lille or the Hotel de Ville in Strasbourg. This is the context for a commission for this widely recognised,  indeed almost official, artist (Grand Prix National des Arts in 1964, an exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1965) from the Federation Française du Bâtiment for its head office, at the beginning of the 1970’s. His response would be this vast, lyrical and rythmic composition in a homogeneous colour scheme. Unfortunately, the illegibility of the certificate of origin leaves us without a title for this work whose creator did not see himself as an abstract artist.   Origin : The Head Office of the Federation Francaise du Bâtiment.
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    Marcel GROMAIRE

    Oiseaux de proie (Birds of prey)

    Aubusson tapestry woven in the Goubely workshop. With label, signed with stamp, and by the artit's son, n°6/6. 1941. Gromaire’s woven pieces are few in number : 11 cartoons, designed between 1938 and 1944, most of them in Aubusson. “His rigorous construction, his use of simplification, his penchant for grand composition and grand fundamental ideas, his knowledgeable use of colour and in sum his supreme quality as a master-craftsman, all of those things were to make of him one of the most expert tapestry artists of his time”, so wrote Jean Cassou (Exhibition catalogue, Marcel Gromaire, Paris, Musée Nationale d’art moderne, 1963). It was Guillaume Janneau, then in the chair of the Mobilier National, who contacted him in 1938, convinced that his style (simplification of shape, geometrical designs framed in black, influenced by cubism, limited colour schemes…) would have something to contribute to the resolution of the new aesthetic problems that the art of tapestry would have to confront in order to bring about its renewal (simplified palette, synthetic cartoon design...) firstly with a commission for a work on the theme of the four elements, then with a second (“les saisons”, the seasons) which would be produced at Aubusson. In 1940 Gromaire joined Lurçat and Dubreuil there. Working alone, with great  meticulosity (numerous drawings anticipate the cartoon which is painted rather than numbered as with Lurçat), in close collaboration with Suzanne Goubely, who would weave all his cartoons, he spent 4 years in Aubusson, during which time he devoted all his creative energy to tapestry. At the end of the war, he left the Creuse and produced no more cartoons, leaving to Lurçat the position of grand initiator of the tapestry renewal movement. « Oiseaux de proie » is one of the 5  tapestry cartoons designed by Gromaire for the Goubely workshop during the war and it is emblematic of his style : inspired by local landscapes, the absence of perspective, the strictly organised yet rich and highly abundant style, a limited palette (it is interesting to note the use at this period when France was occupied, the dominant colours of red, white and blue)... The atmosphere of this piece is more menacing than that of other pre-existing works.
    Bibliography : Le Point, Aubusson et la renaissance de la Tapisserie, mars 1946, ill. p.35 Jean Lurçat, Tapisserie française, Bordas, 1947, plate 25 J. Cassou, M. Damain, R. Moutard-Uldry, la tapisserie française et les peintres cartonniers, Tel, 1957 Exhibition catalogue, Gromaire, œuvre tissée, Aubusson, Musée de la tapisserie, 1995, reproduced on p. 49 Symposium Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie in Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie 1992, ill. n°14 (detail) Exhibition catalogue La manufacture des Gobelins dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, Beauvais, Galerie nationale de la tapisserie, 1999.
     
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    Alfred MANESSIER

    Tapis de sol (Floor carpet)

    Aubusson carpet/tapestry woven by the Goubely workshop. 1959.
        Manessier was trained in the Bissière studio where he became familiar with decorative art (the sets for the 1937 Exhibition), and with applied arts particularly in the context of religious art (cartoons for stained glass, the design of liturgical ornamentation,...), and designed his first tapestry cartoon in 1947. Somewhat disappointed with the results, too well-defined and arid for his taste, he turned in the 1950’s to the Plasse le Caisne workshop. Exploiting a different technique which allowed for the contrast of stitches, materials, the use of relief, ... and a greater freedom for the weaver who thus engaged in a close collaboration with the cartoon designer, Plasse le Caisne went on to weave most of Manessier’s tapestries, some of them particularly large-scale (“Chant Grégorien” for the Maison de la Radio,...), some of them forming a cycle (the 12 “Cantiques sprituels de Saint Jean de la Croix),...   Very much a one-off in Manessier’s work : a rug, but woven using the Aubusson weaving technique in the Goubely workshop (the only time they worked for the artist) ; it was a commission from Myriam Prévot, co-director of the Galerie de France, which was very active in the promotion of most of the non-figurative and lyrical abstract painters (organising 7 separate exhibitions devoted to Manessier), for her flat on the quai d’Anjou : underlying the close relationship between the artist and the gallery owner who represented him.   Bibliography : Exhibition Catalogue Manessier, oeuvre tissé, Eglise du château de Felletin, 1993 (ill. p.39)
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    Jacques LAGRANGE

    Banlieue (Suburbs)

     
    Aubusson tapestry woven in the Goubely workshop. With signed label. 1945.
       
    An enthusiastic mural artist as early as 1937 (he participated in the Exposition Internationale), Lagrange designed his first cartoons in 1945, and became one of the founding members of the A.P.C.T. His early cartoons were expressionist (like Matégot and Tourlière), then his work evolved towards a stylisation (dating from his collaboration with Pierre Baudouin) which would bring him in the 1970’s to a highly refined style using very pure colours. As well as his important rôle in the tapestry renaissance movement of the period (and the state commissions that went with it), Lagrange would become a teacher at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a regular collaborator with Jacques Tati, a designer of monumental elements incorporated in various architectural projects and a recognised painter close to Estève and Lapicque. « Banlieue » the first of my tapestries woven in Aubusson, pictures the work of travelling mattress carders using a curious contraption to comb wool which flies around the streets” explained the artist. In his early works Lagrange in a realistic, almost expressionist, vein deals in themes of life in the suburbs, the people who plied their trades (here in an amusing mise en abyme about working with wool) in daily life (cf also Guignebert “le marché aux puces” “flea market”  which is contemporary) in a completely different style from Lurçat’s cosmology. The tapestry was featured in the 1946 exhibition and two other copies are conserved at the Musée de la Chaux-de-Fonds and the Museum du Pays d’Ussel.   Bibliography : Multi-authored, Muraille et laine, Editions Pierre Tisné, 1946, ill. n°58 Madeleine Jarry, La tapisserie, art du XXe siècle, Office du livre, 1974, ill. n°69 Exhibition Catalogue Lagrange, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1987, ill.p.16-17 Exhibition catalogue, Jean Lurçat, compagnons de route et passants considérables, Felletin, Eglise du château, 1992, ill. p.29 Robert Guinot, Jacques Lagrange, les couleurs de la vie, Lucien Souny editeur, 2005, n°28, illustrated Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, ill. p.73 J.J. et B. Wattel, Jacques Lagrange ets es toiles : peintures, tapisseries, cinéma, Editions Louvre Victoire, 2020, ill. p.33, 70-71
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    Dom ROBERT

    Chèvrefeuilles (Honeysuckle/Goats and leaves)

        Aubusson tapestry woven in the Goubely workshop. With signed label, n°1. 1973.     A Benedictine monk and an illuminator, Dom Robert met Jean Lurçat in 1941 at the Abbey of En Calcat : while he never abandoned drawing (his watercolours, painted to life, would serve him as a reservoir of ideas for his tapestries), his work as a cartoonist (he was a member of the A.P.C.T. from its inception) would take on a considerable importance (at least a hundred cartoons, all numbered) and would be highly thought of.  His immediately recognisable style, absence of  perspective¸motifs inspired from the natural world (in a Paradisiac style) where stylised flora and fauna combine in a festive and extrovert exuberance, where the influence of mediaeval tapestry can be clearly felt ; poetic and colourful, Dom Robert’s cartoons are the incarnation of their author’s spiritual asceticism. Inaugurated in the Spring of 2015, the musée Dom Robert opened its doors in in the monastery-school in Sorèze in the department of the Tarn.   Goats and foliage in all their variety, rather than « Honeysuckle » (Chèvre means goat and feuille means leaf in French n.tr.), Dom Robert was never one to turn his back on the possibility of a pun (as in “Plein champ” meaning Open field but to the ear it can be confused with Plainchant tr.n.). It is interesting that a goat appears also in that tapestry design from 1970. Here, on a uniquely large scale for this subject, the goats are displayed against an autumnal background, a reference to “l’Automne” (Autumn) which was the last of the series The Seasons completed in 1943. A similar design is on display at the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie in Aubusson.   Bibliography : Exhibition Catalogue Dom Robert, tapisseries récentes, galerie la Demeure, 1974, ill. p.15, cartoon p.23 Multi-authored, Dom Robert, Tapisseries, Editions Julliard, 1980, ill p.70-71, detail on front cover, cartoon p.85 Multi-authored, Dom Robert, Tapisseries, Editions Siloë-Sodec, 1990, ill. P.62-67 Exhibition Catalogue, Dom Robert, œuvre tissé, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1990 Exhibition Catalogue, Hommage à Dom Robert, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, Aubusson, 1998 Multi-authored, la clef des champs, Dom Robert, Editions Privat, 2003, ill. p.124 Multi-authored, les saisons de Dom Robert, Tapisseries, Editions Hazan, 2014, ill p.164-167 B. Ythier, Guide du visiteur, Cité Internationale de la tapisserie d’Aubusson, ill. p.65 R. Guinot, hors-série la Montagne, une Cité pour la tapisserie d’Aubusson, 2018, ill. p.82 Multi-authored, la tapisserie française, Editions du Patrimoine, 2017, ill. 312-313
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    Robert WOGENSKY

    Serpent d'étoiles (serpent of stars)

       
    Aubusson tapestry woven by the Tabard workshop. With signed label. 1961.
            A member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), Wogensky is one of the many artists who would follow in Lurçat’s footsteps immediately after the war. At first influenced by his predecessor, Wogensky’s subsequent work (159 cartoons according to the 1989 exhibition catalogue) would evolve during the 1960’s towards a, not completely self-avowed, lyrical abstraction, from cosmic-astronomical themes expressed in decomposed, moving, birdlike shapes to cartoons both more refined and less dense. Although always claiming to be a painter, the artist’s conception of tapestry is extremely well thought out : “the realisation of a mural cartoon…. requires the consideration of a space which is no longer ours alone, by the nature of its dimensions, its scale, it also imposes a grand gesture which transforms and accentuates our presence.”   « Serpent d’étoiles » (Serpent of stars) references the constellation Serpens (but also inevitably Giono’s novel of the same name), at a time (the 1960’s) when his out and out lyricism led him to the evocation of celestial bodies, space, the galaxies ; from “Cassiopée” in 1961, “Chant des étoiles” in 1962 (which figured at the Biennale de Lausanne),  to “Galaxie”  (1970) now in the collection of the French Senate. A similar tapestry figures in the the collection of the Conseil Régional du Limousin.     Bibliography : Exhibition Catalogue Robert Wogensky, tapisseries, Galerie la Demeure, 1962, ill. Exhibition catalogue Robert Wogensky, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, 1989 Exhibition catalogue Robert Wogensky, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1989-1990, ill. p.20 Exhibition Catalogue Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992, ill. p.73 Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, ill. p.67    
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    Claude IDOUX

    Composition

     
    Aubusson tapestry woven in the Rivière des Borderies workshop. Circa 1950.
            A friend of both Bertholle and Le Normand, with whom he  produced several frescoes in the 1940’s, Idoux produced his first tapestry cartoon in 1946 and joined the A.P.C.T. in 1951. His tapestries, where geometrical and optical effects resonate in a grand harmony (and this is only the beginning of the 1950’s!) hark back to his work in stained glass (the church of Notre Dame in Royan for example). As a confirmation of his meteoric rise in the world of tapestry (producing around twenty cartoons in ten years), official recognition came with a commission for two tapestries “Jardin Magique” and “Fée Mirabelle” which were created for the 1st class saloon of the Atlantic ocean liner “France” (“Jardin Magique” is now kept at the eco-museum in St Nazaire).    
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    Mario PRASSINOS

    Les six cyprès (the six cypresses)

      Aubusson tapestry woven in the Goubely workshop. With signed  label. 1957.   I became interested in the art of tapestry particularly because I was excited by the numbered cartoon technique consisting of the fabrication of a mental coloured image using a code…. Tapestry is an essential exercise. As I practised it, it is perhaps the desire to interrogate, down to the finest detail, a work which exists in two dimensions.” (quoted in the exhibition  catalogue, Prassinos, rétrospective de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, Puyricard, 1983). So much for the artist’s manifesto.  Prassinos designed his first cartoons in 1951 (most of which, around 150, would be woven in the Goubely workshop); then he joined the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie). After several cartoons taking birds as their theme, Prassinos, like several other artists, despite being close to Lurçat, (Matégot, Wogensky…) turned resolutely towards abstraction, in a very personal style where sinuous shapes entwine in contrasting colours (often following a scheme of black-red-brown-beige).   Prassinos moved to Eygalières in 1951 and his first tapestries were designed at the same period : « Cyprès noir » and « Cyprès rouge », both from 1952, number among his very first cartoons, echoing the simultaneous discovery of a locality and a technique. Here the subject is revisited on a larger scale ; one of the 3 originals is in the possession of the Musée Municipal d’Arnhem.       Bibliography : Exhibition Catalogue Mario Prassinos, œuvre tissé, Galerie la Demeure, 1961, ill. p.20-21 Exhibition catalogue Mario Prassinos, tapisseries monumentales, Abbaye de Montmajour, Arles, 1974 Mario Prassinos, œuvre tissé, La Demeure, 1974, n°20 Exhibition catalogue Mario Prassinos, Tapisseries , Aubusson, Musée départemental de le Tapisserie, 1984 Exhibition catalogue Prassinos, Tapisseries, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1988
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    Camille HILAIRE

    Treilles (trellis)

       
    Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop for Leleu. With label. 1964.
     
    With a taste for the large-scale, influenced by Untersteller at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Hilaire undertook numerous mural paintings. In the same vein, beginning in 1949, along with a number of other artists stimulated by Lurçat, (he would join the latter at the A.P.C.T. Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) he designed a number of cartoons some of which were woven at Beauvais or at Les Gobelins.   This tapestry hung in the dining-room of the villa Médy Roc, at the Cap d’Antibes, for which the Leleu studio designed furnishings and fittings starting in 1957 : their philosophy, inspired by Jacques Adnet’s theories of the interweaving of architecture, furniture and tapestry design , which should all be unified by a single view, was to lean into the idea of a tradition of good taste “à la française”, as interpreted by the best designers and artists of the period. With this in mind, another work, also by Hilaire, “Jardin à la française” was already in place in the dining-room before this tapestry, where a traditional trellis shelters birds of more exotic plumage, was installed in the same area in 1964. Both works appear in the film “Les seins de glace”, directed by Lautner featuring Delon, Brasseur and Mireille Darc, which was filmed on location in the villa.     Provenance : villa Médy Roc, Cap d’Antibes   Bibliography : Exhibition catalogue Hilaire, œuvre tissé, galerie Verrière, 1970 Exhibition catalogue, du trait à la lumière, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour at Vic-sur-Seille, 2010.

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