La voix du reliquaire (the voice of the reliquary)

 

Aubusson tapestry woven in the Legoueix workshop.
With signed label, n°1/3.
1975.

 

 

Sautour-Gaillard had his first cartoon woven in 1971 by the Legoueix workshop (a collaboration which was to last), and from then on he designed many very large-scale projects of which the most spectacular was “Pour un certain idéal” a series of 17 tapestries dealing with the theme of Olympianism (property of the Musée de l’Olympisme in Lausanne). If at first close to lyrical abstraction, the artist produced in the 1990’s cartoons superimposing different decorative motifs, textures and figures whose unity originated in the woven texture itself.

 

« La voix du reliquaire » reveals a certain proximity of the artist, in his early work, to the abstract world of Soulages or Schneider. We recognise, transposed into the wool medium, the gestures,the overflows, characteristic of the artists of the “envolée lyrique”, in a severely limited range of colours.

 

Bibliography :
D. Cavelier, Jean-René Sautour-Gaillard, la déchirure, Lelivredart, 2013, ill.p.163