François FAUREAU

The career of François Faureau is quite unique. Born in Aubusson, he attended the ENAD, then under the direction of Marius Martin who already promotes thick weaving and counted tones that Lurçat will take up again. It is in this way that he participated in the ENAD stand at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925 as a painter-cartoonist with the tapestry "Solitude, verdure" or the screen "Canards", which oscillate between a classicizing style and the influence of Cubism. He will subsequently have his own workshop, but his work will remain confidential and far removed from the protagonists of the "Renaissance of Tapestry".

If the workshops of Aubusson (like the National Manufactures) continued their activity under the occupation, the woven achievements subject to the injunctions of Art-Marshal remain rare, although this traditional know-how could respond to the values of the National Revolution. The famous formula pronounced from June 25, 1940 by Pétain (Emmanuel Berl being the pen), and become a Vichy leitmotif, exalting rurality, rooting, and, more prosaically, agriculture, is illustrated here in a literal and synthetic way: variety of work, vegetation, architectures, animals, ... flourishing under the aegis of the Vichy regime.

Provenance: Régine Deforges Collection

Bibliography:
Cat. Expo. Tapestries 1925, Aubusson, Cité de la tapisserie, 2012