Marc Saint-Saëns

Lurçat approached Saint-Saëns, initially a fresco painter, from 1940 onwards. And, during the war, he produced his first allegorical masterpieces, tapestries of indignation, combat, and resistance: 'the Foolish Virgins', 'Theseus and the Minotaur'. After the war, he naturally joined Lurçat, with whom he shared convictions (about numbered cartoons and counted tones, about the specific writing required for tapestry, ...) within the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painters-Cartoonists of Tapestry). His universe, where the human figure, stretched and elongated, holds a considerable place (compared in particular to the place it occupies among his colleagues Lurçat, or Picart le Doux), revolves around traditional themes: women, Commedia dell'arte, Greek myths, ... sublimated by the brilliance of the colors and the simplification of the layout. He then evolved, in the 1960s, towards more lyrical, almost abstract cartoons, where cosmic elements and forces dominate.

If Music is a permanent feature in Saint-Saëns' work, its stylistic evolution in the 60s towards a more informal, biomorphic art affects the treatment of the subject; but doesn't such lyricism suit the expression of 'Bel Canto' ideally?

Bibliography:
Exhibition Cat. French Tapestry from the Middle Ages to the present day, Paris, Museum of Modern Art, 1946
Exhibition Cat. Saint-Saëns, Paris, La Demeure gallery, 1970, ill.
Exhibition Cat. Saint-Saëns, woven work, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1987
Exhibition Cat. Marc Saint-Saëns, tapestries, 1935-1979, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and Contemporary Tapestry, 1997-1998