Robert WOGENSKY

Member of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painter-Cartoonists for Tapestry), Wogensky was one of the many artists who would devote themselves to tapestry following Lurçat, in the immediate post-war period. First influenced by him, Wogensky’s work (159 cartoons after the 1989 exhibition catalogue) then evolved, in the 1960s, toward a lyrical abstraction that was not always fully embraced: from cosmic-astronomical themes to decomposed and moving forms of birds, toward cartoons that were more pared down and less dense. Although he always proclaimed himself a painter, the artist’s thinking about tapestry was highly accomplished: « To create a mural cartoon…. is to think in relation to a space that no longer belongs to us, by its dimensions, its scale; it is also the requirement of a wide gesture that transforms and heightens our presence ».

« Procyon » belongs to Wogensky’s « cosmic » vein (its very title is proof of this), which runs throughout the 1960s, and of which « Cosmos » (1968, University of Strasbourg) and « Galaxie » (1970, Senate, Palais du Luxembourg) will be the highlights. Chinés (omnipresent) and color fields coexist there in harmonies of colors with subtle variations, in a curious, unknown world—at once close to very small cells seen under the microscope and to the infinitely vast.

An identical tapestry is kept at the Musée Jean Lurçat and at Contemporary Tapestry, in Angers.