All tapestries

        Lurçat's body of work is immense, but it is his role in the revival of the art of tapestry that has ensured his place in history. He began working with canvas in 1917, then collaborated with Marie Cuttoli in the 1920s and 1930s. His first collaboration with Les Gobelins dates back to 1937, when he discovered the Apocalypse tapestry in Angers, which inspired him to devote himself entirely to tapestry. He first tackled the technical issues with François Tabard, then, when he moved to Aubusson during the war, he defined his own system: large stitches, counted tones, numbered cartoons. A huge production then began (more than 1,000 cartoons), amplified by his desire to involve his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) and his collaboration with the La Demeure gallery and Denise Majorel, then by his role as a tireless promoter of the medium throughout the world. His woven work bears witness to a specifically decorative art of imagery, in a highly personal, cosmogonic symbolic iconography (sun, planets, zodiac, four elements, etc.), stylized plants, animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras, etc.), stand out against a background without perspective (deliberately distanced from painting) and, in his most ambitious cartoons, are intended to share a vision that is both poetic (he sometimes embellishes these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes were addressed as early as the war: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth, etc.) and whose culmination was to be the "Chant du Monde" (Jean Lurçat Museum, former Saint-Jean Hospital, Angers), which was unfinished at the time of his death.   To his traditional scattered motifs (stars, fish, butterflies, etc.), Lurçat added two intersecting rays of light (hence the title) that alter the colors along their path: there could be no better way to show that the sun can be a danger to tapestry (another cartoon, "Coup de soleil" (formerly in our possession) illustrates the theme even more explicitly).     Bibliography: Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Exhibition catalog: Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976 Cat. Expo. Les domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986 Colloque Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie, 1992 Exhibition catalog. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Museums of Lower Normandy, 1992 Exhibition catalog. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Academy of Fine Arts, 2004 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Exhibition catalog: Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016 Exhibition catalog: Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, Galerie des Gobelins, 2016  

      Although he first made his name as a painter of large-scale decorations (particularly for the stage), Carzou's forays into tapestry are relatively rare. This cartoon displays the artist's characteristic style, with intertwining lines illustrating dreamlike subjects: the theme is taken from Carzou's (only) cartoon woven by the Manufactures Nationales, "L'invitation au voyage" (Invitation to Travel). At the dawn of the 3rd^e At the turn of the millennium (and a few months before his death), the artist, a regular critic of modern society, had a unique vision of future travel, focused on ballooning and sailing.

    Lurçat approached Saint-Saëns, initially a fresco painter, in 1940. And during the war, Saint-Saëns produced his first allegorical masterpieces, tapestries depicting indignation, combat, and resistance: "Les Vierges folles" (The Mad Virgins) and "Thésée et le Minotaure" (Theseus and the Minotaur). At the end of the war, he naturally joined Lurçat, whose convictions he shared (on numbered cartoons and limited tones, on the specific style required for tapestry, etc.) within the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie). His universe, in which the human figure, stretched and elongated, occupies a considerable place (compared in particular to the place it occupies in the work of his colleagues Lurçat and Picart le Doux), revolves around traditional themes: women, the Commedia dell'arte, Greek myths, etc., sublimated by the brilliance of the colors and the simplification of the layout. He then evolved in the 1960s towards more lyrical, almost abstract cartoons, dominated by cosmic elements and forces.   "L'éclair" [another name for our cartoon]... reflects Saint-Saëns' new direction, which became apparent in the 1960s; it evokes cosmic forces [or, with our title, physical phenomena] less through the precision of the drawing than through the power, even the stridency, of the color....This tapestry adorned the Aerospatiale poster for the inauguration of its Cultural Center in Toulouse in 1971," Michèle Heng tells us in the Aubusson exhibition catalog. Saint-Saëns, woven works, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie, 1987, reproduced on p.47. Exhibition catalog. Marc Saint-Saëns, tapestries, 1935-1979, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1997-1998.