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 first tackle technical questions 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 then begins (more than 1000 cartoons), amplified by the desire to train his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Tapestry Cartoonists) and the 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 demonstrates 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 distant from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious cartoons, to share a vision that is both poetic (he sometimes enlivens these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes are addressed from the war onwards: 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.

His journey to Brazil in 1954 was a decisive source of inspiration for Lurçat : the flora and fauna (particularly the butterflies, a recurrent theme) of the Amazon appear repeatedly : “What interests me with the butterfly, ... is the extraordinary inventiveness of the interlacing forms, the sparkling colours, the total freedom of their coloration...” (Claude Faux, Lurçat à haute voix, 1962, p. 151). This geographical source will know several avatars: ‘Vera Cruz’ thus, but also ‘New Delhi’... will be pretexts for butterflies.

Bibliography:
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Cat.Expo. Jean Lurçat, Nice, Museum of Ponchettes, 1968
Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 years later, Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, 1976
Cat. Expo. The domains of Jean Lurçat, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and Contemporary Tapestry, 1986
Colloquium Jean Lurçat and the Renaissance of Tapestry in Aubusson, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1992
Cat. Expo. Dialogues with Lurçat, Museums of Lower Normandy, 1992
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Simone Lurçat Donation, Academy of Fine Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, a life for tapestry, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Master of French Modernity, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, to the mere sound of the sun, Paris, Gobelins Gallery, 2016
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, the earth, fire, water, air, Perpignan, Hyacinthe Rigaud Art Museum, 2024