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Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop for the Compagnie des arts Français. 1945.
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Arès et Aphrodite (Ares and Aphrodite)
« It is thus easy to understand that, having based my painting on my love of tapestry, it was relatively easy for me, and particularly tempting, to produce tapestries which were faithful to my painting” writes the artist in the exhibition catalogue for the 1970 show at the Galerie Verrière.It is not until 1961 that he started making designs (over 50) both for woven tapestries (at Aubusson, but also for the Mobilier National with, on occasion, the collaboration of Pierre Baudoin), but also those employing needlepoint. The artist’s very audacious palette is immediately recognisable in these cartons, with their use of primary colours. But if Lapicque’s artistic language is established in the 1950’s, the themes which appear in his work evolve with time : thus mythological subjects (recurrent in the history of tapestry making) appear in his work following a journey to Greece in 1964, and « Diane et Actéon », then « Pélops » were the first of his cartoons to be woven in Aubusson predating “Arès et Aphrodite” whose depiction is faithful to the ancient texts (Homer, Ovid) : Hephaestus throwing his net and the Olympian gods laughing at the scene.... Bibliography : Exhibition catalogue, Expo Lapicque, Lyons, Galerie Verrière 1970Aubusson tapestry woven in the Picaud workshop. With signed label, n°1/4. Circa 1970. -
La girafe en feu (Flaming giraffe)
Despite Dali’s immense aura, his works have never been woven in the National Manufactures and, although the mechanically woven versions of his paintings are indeed (too?) numerous, the handwoven Aubusson tapestries of his works are extremely rare : only the Picaud and Jean Laurent workshops were privileged enough to produce them. It was Pierre Argillet who was their instigator. A close associate of the surrealists and particularly Dali, he put together a wonderful collection which he installed in the château at Vaux-le-Pénil in the department of Seine et Marne, where he opened his museum of Surrealism at the same period that Dali inaugurated his museum in Figueras (Teatro-museu Dali) : they agreed at the time to commission tapestries of earlier works of the artist to decorate the galeries of both locations. Hence « la girafe en feu » is the transposition of one of the 7 engravings of the series entitled « Tauromachie surréaliste » produced by Argillet in 1966 and was intended as a bridge connecting Picasso’s “ tauromaquia” and Dali’s surrealist inspiration (the flaming giraffe had been a recurrent trope since the 1930’s). From a technical point of view, the transfer from one medium to the other is visible proof of the highly skilled artistry of which the weavers had become masters since the tapestry renaissance of the 20th century.Aubusson tapestry woven in the Picaud workshop. With signed label, n°3/6. 1985. -
La plage (the beach)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop, for the Compagnie des Arts Français. 1942. Adnet, who was placed at the head of the Compagnie des Arts Français in 1928, was keen to reinstate tapestry design as an art, distinct from painting, and a key element in interior decoration, with the constraint of numbered coloured threads (in a very similar approach to that of Lurçat). With this intention he contacted at the same time Desnoyer, Coutaud, Planson, and Brianchon. Known above all as a studio artist Desnoyer whose classicism is tempered by an intense use of colour, is an important painter of the French school between the wars. His work was woven by the Gobelins in the 1950’s. This cartoon displays the simplified forms and saturated colours which are characteristic of Desnoyer’s paintings. As for the theme, it is a recurrent one in his work (Desnoyer lived in Sète before moving to Saint-Cyprien), even though, retrospectively, it might appear somewhat at odds with daily life under the Occupation. Bibliography : Exhibition catalogue La tapisserie française du moyen âge à nos jours, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1946, n°246 Cat. Exp. Le Mobilier National et les Manufactures Nationales des Gobelins et de Beauvais sous la IVe République, Beauvais, Galerie de la Tapisserie, 1997 -
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. -
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 -
Composition
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).Aubusson tapestry woven in the Rivière des Borderies workshop. Circa 1950. -
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 -
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
