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.

Despite his brother André's profession, Lurçat's forays into architectural pattern weavings are few (we will note the oneiric "Prince's Palace", but also "Chicago" or "Paris",…). "The Roofs" is distinguished by its title, generic, but which in fact illustrates, in an allusive way, the town of Aubusson, where the artist stayed during the war, as a response to Gromaire's "Aubusson", much more detailed. A few roofs, turrets, dormer windows and inhabited windows are enough to embody the capital of the Tapestry Renaissance, flown over by 2 angels embodying the Sun and the Moon straight out of the imagination of a medieval image maker. Aubusson, the inspiration for medieval tapestry, the symbiosis of the City and nature (note the variety of foliage), everything makes this tapestry a manifesto.

Bibliography:
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, Nice, Musée des Ponchettes, 1968
Exhibition Cat. Lurçat, 10 years later, Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976, reproduced
Exhibition Cat. The domains of Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat and de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986
Colloquium Jean Lurçat and the renaissance of tapestry in Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie, 1992
Exhibition Cat. Dialogues with Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, Simone Lurçat Donation, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, a life for tapestry, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, Master of French Modernity, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, to the mere sound of the sun, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016
Exhibition Cat. Jean Lurçat, the earth, fire, water, air, Perpignan, Musée d'art Hyacinthe Rigaud, 2024