Maurice André

Maurice André stayed at Aubusson throughout the war. Founder of the cooperative group “Tapisserie de France,” and a member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), he developed a personal aesthetic, far from Lurçat—made of rigorous cubist flat areas—within a chromatic range often pared down to essentials, and he received ambitious public commissions for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (“L’Europe unie dans le Travail et la Paix”), or the French Pavilion for the 1958 Exhibition in Brussels (“La Technique moderne au service de l’Homme”). Naturally (and as with Wogensky, Prassinos, …), he then moved toward abstraction—first rather lyrical, then in an increasingly geometric style—following a path very close to that of Matégot. In the mid-1960s, André’s style drew nearer to Matégot’s, where slashing, punctures, and stippling became the norm. Here, variations of greens and triangular forms function as visual equivalents to the mass of the Vercors.