Jean Lurçat

The work of Lurçat is immense; however, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that has earned him a lasting place in posterity. As early as 1917, he began with works woven on canvas, and then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he also discovered the Angers Apocalypse tapestry hangings, which definitively prompted him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed technical questions first with François Tabard, and then, during his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: bold point (gros point), counted tones, and drawn Cartoons, Numbered. A gigantic production then began (more than 1,000 Cartoons), amplified by his desire to bring along his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), and his collaboration with the gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then, through his tireless work as a promoter of the medium across the world. His woven work testifies to an imagerie art that is specifically decorative, with an iconography that is highly personal and symbolic, cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the four elements…), stylized vegetal forms, and animals (goats, cocks, butterflies, chimeras…), set against a background without perspective (deliberately distant from painting). In his most ambitious Cartoons, it was intended to share at once a poetic vision (he also sometimes imbues these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed from the war onward: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…). Its culminating point would be the “Chant du Monde” (Musée Jean Lurçat, former Hôpital Saint-Jean, Angers), left unfinished at his death. The rooster, in different forms, with different attributes and playing different roles, is the central figure in Lurçat’s bestiary—a kind of stylistic motif developed endlessly; the singularity here lies in the crown of ivy and the feather-leaves, exemplars of the animal-vegetal syntheses characteristic of the artist. Bibliography: Cat. Expo. La tapisserie française, Musée d’Art moderne, Paris, 1946 Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, tapestries from the Rothmans Foundation, Musée de Metz, 1969 Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d’Art moderne of the city of 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 Cat. Expo. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016