Maurice André

Maurice André stayed in Aubusson throughout the war. He founded the cooperative group “Tapisserie de France” and was 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 planes, in a chromatic range that was often pared down, 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 like Wogensky, Prassinos,…), he later moved toward abstraction: first rather lyrical, then in an increasingly geometric style, in a path very close to Matégot’s.

Maurice André’s first Cartoon, “Aubusson”, shows both his adherence to Lurçat’s technical principles (counted tones, flat planes,…) and what distinguishes him aesthetically. (As with Gromaire, who had treated the same subject a few years earlier.) In fact, it was Dubreuil—who was his father-in-law—that he was then closest to; his stylistic emancipation came shortly afterward. The historical importance of this Cartoon is undeniable: it is one of the very few to depict the city (even more synthesized than with Gromaire) at a time when the Renaissance of Tapestry was still only embryonic.