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 issues with François Tabard, then, on the occasion of his installation in Aubusson during the war, he will define his system: large stitches, counted tones, cartoondrawings numbered.
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 Painters-CartoonCartoonists 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 testifies to a specifically decorative art of imagery, in a very personal symbolic iconography, cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, 4 elements...), stylized vegetal, animal (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras...), standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately remote from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious cartoons, to share a vision both poetic (he sometimes enamels these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the great themes are addressed from the war: freedom, resistance, brotherhood, truth...) and whose culminating point will be the " Chant du Monde " (Jean Lurçat Museum, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), unfinished at his death.

« Univers végétal » presents a paradox : there are more animals than plants pictured within. Thus already in 1944 Lurçat displays his penchant for framing the space within his compositions as with the cabinets and bestiaries : stuffed animals, as if in a cabinet of curiosities, are exhibited on shelves suspended on chains, hanging in starry skies in a poetic vision whose aim is to illustrate the unity of the natural world.
This design was woven in various formats, as can be seen in the 1946 exhibition : a vertical rectangle, a square (2m x 2m, and also 3m x 3m) for Jansen, a Paris-based interior decorator, whose trade mark can be seen woven into this piece despite his not having a workshop in Aubusson (his commissions were woven by the Dumontet workshop).

Bibliography:
Cat. Expo. French Tapestry, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1946, No. 278-279
Seven Centuries of French Tapestries, Word and Deed, ill.
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Publisher, 1957, ill No. 31, 99 (details)
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, tapestries from the Rothmans Foundation, Metz Museum, 1969, cat. No. 6
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
Jean Lurçat Colloquium 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, 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