Jean Lurçat

Lurçat's work is immense: however, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him a place in posterity. From 1917, he began with canvas works, then, in the 1920s and 30s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates back to 1937, when he simultaneously discovered the Apocalypse tapestry of Angers, which definitively encouraged him to devote himself to tapestry. He will tackle technical questions first with François Tabard, then on the occasion of his installation in Aubusson during the war, he will define his system: large stitch, counted tones, numbered drawn cartoons.

A gigantic production begins then (more than 1000 cartoons), amplified by the desire to involve his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painter-Cartoonists of Tapestry) and collaboration with the La Demeure gallery and Denise Majorel, then by his role as tireless propagator of the medium across the World.

His woven work reflects a specifically decorative art of imagery, in a very personal, cosmogonic symbolic iconography (sun, planets, zodiac, 4 elements…), stylized vegetation, animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…), standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately removed from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious cartoons, to share a vision that is both poetic (he sometimes sprinkles these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes are addressed from the war on: freedom, resistance, brotherhood, truth… ) and whose culminating point will be the "Song of the World" (Jean Lurçat Museum, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), unfinished at his death.

"This is a very original version given by Lurçat, of the theme of the months illustrated by tapestry for many centuries. Each month is symbolized by a bubble from which are born elements of vegetation or sunbeams.
Conceived in the same spirit as "De Natura solari rerum", this piece prefigures "Es la verdad", in which we find, a little like a border, placed in a frieze, the twelve months of the year" (Martine Mathias in Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, le combat et la victoire, centenary, Aubusson, Departmental Tapestry Museum, 1992, p.43)

Bibliography:
Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Exhibition Cat. Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976
Exhibition Cat. Les domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, le combat et la victoire, centenaire, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie1992, ill. p.43
Symposium  Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie , 1992
Exhibition Cat. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016