Composition au chou (composition with cabbage)
Tapestry woven By Lilette Keller.
Circa 1963.
Sam Szafran, best known as the painter (or rather, the water-colour and pastel artist) of philodendrons and staircases, was also, previously, in the early 1960’s, a painter of cabbages ; here is how he explained it : “I remember being taken by my grandfather to the synagogue in the rue Pavée. We walked through the Marais district. It was summer. The streets were filled with the abominable smell of cooking cabbage, because it was the cheapest, most wholesome vegetable”. From this period date his beginnings as a pastel artist, and his encounter with Lilette Keller who would become his wife, weaver and assistant to Jean Lurçat.
It is thus at the meeting point of these elements and of the person who embodies them, that our tapestry has its origin, one of the very few made by the artist and his wife in an exemplary collaboration (in a similar way to Marthe Hennebert weaving for Lurçat) : a wonderfully realistic cabbage, rendered by very subtle shading, is caught up in a maelstrom of greenery (a thematic tapestry colour if ever there was one), which in some ways announces the opaque and dense philodendron pictures to come.
Bibliography :
Exhibition Catalogue Sam Szafran, obsessions d'un peintre, Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, 2022-2023, p.175
