Shadows and lights
Tapestry of Aubusson woven by the Atelier Pinton.
With its authenticity label (bolduc) signed by the artist.
Circa 1965.
Matégot, first a decorator and then a creator of objects and furniture (a practice he abandoned in 1959), met François Tabard in 1945 and gave him his first Cartoons, figurative at first, then soon abstract, from the 1950s onward. He became a member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) in 1949, took part in numerous international exhibitions (Matégot, as Lurçat had done before him, was an indefatigable campaigner for tapestry), responded to many public commissions, sometimes monumental (« Rouen », 85 m2 for the office building of the prefecture of Seine-Maritime, but also tapestries for Orly, for the Maison de la Radio, for the IMF…), and produced no fewer than 629 Cartoons up until the 1970s. In 1990, the Matégot Foundation for Contemporary Tapestry was inaugurated in Bethesda, in the United States. Matégot belonged, with other artists such as Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, to those who resolutely turned wool toward abstraction—lyrical at first, then geometric in the 1970s—by exploiting different technical aspects of the craft: graduated tones, beatings, punctuations, dotted points… This tapestry echoed Matégot’s concerns about games of shadows and/or light, which he often evoked in these titles (Cf. “Lumière d’été”, Millon-Robert sale, 7.11.90, no. 31, reproduced on the cover of the catalogue, “Piège de lumière” preserved at the Musée Jean Lurçat and of Contemporary Tapestry, and reproduced p.47 in the catalogue of the exhibition). Here the Cartoon is strongly contrasted, like a beam of light between 2 opaque blocks (but with fissures) and blacks (but with nuances). In truth, the entirety of Matégot’s production plays with these transparencies and superimpositions, as if the light (despite being fatal to his colors) were trying to force its way through the wool. Provenance: Fonds de l’Atelier Pinton Bibliographie : Cat. Exp. Matégot, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1990-1991
