Jean Lurçat

Lurçat's body of work is immense; however, it is his role in the renewal of the art of tapestry that has ensured his lasting legacy. From 1917, he began with needlepoint works, and then, in the 1920s and 30s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins Manufactory dates from 1937, when he simultaneously discovered the Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers, which definitively inspired him to dedicate himself to tapestry. He addressed technical questions initially with François Tabard, and then, during his time in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: large stitches, counted tones, and numbered, drawn cartoons. A gigantic production then began (more than 1000 cartoons), amplified by the desire to involve his painter friends, the creation of the APCT (Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters) and the collaboration with the La Demeure gallery and Denise Majorel, then by his role as a tireless propagator of the medium throughout the world.

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

The framing of motifs is a recurrent trope in Lurçat's production (one only has to think of his “armoires” - cabinets) ; nevertheless, nature, flowers, cannot be contained and tend to spill over, out of the frame. This composition partially revisits (the right-hand side) his work entitled “Nouveau jardin Marcenac”, a cartoon dating from 1955.

Bibliography:
Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Exhibition Catalog Jean Lurçat, Nice, Musée des Ponchettes, 1968
Exhibition Catalog Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1976
Exhibition Catalog Les Domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1986
Symposium Jean Lurçat et la Renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée Départemental de la Tapisserie, 1992;
Exhibition Catalog Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Jean Lurçat, Simone Lurçat Donation, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004;
Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie;
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013;
Exhibition Catalog Jean Lurçat, Meister der französicher Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016;
Exhibition Catalog Jean Lurçat, Au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, Galerie des Gobelins, 2016