Marcel GROMAIRE

Gromaire's woven work is modest: 11 cartons, designed between 1938 and 1944, most of them in Aubusson itself. "His rigorous constructions, his simplifications, his taste for grand composition and fundamental ideas, his knowledge as a colorist and to sum it up his supreme quality as a master and craftsman, all of this made him one of the most perfect tapestry makers of his time", Jean Cassou could say (Cat. Expo. Marcel Gromaire, Paris, National Museum of Modern Art, 1963).

It was Guillaume Janneau, at the head of the Mobilier National, who called on him in 1938, convinced that his style (simplification of forms, geometric design outlined in black, influence of Cubism, limited palette ...) would advantageously meet the new aesthetic problems that tapestry must solve to be reborn (simplified colour ranges, synthetic cartoons, ...) : first with a commission on the theme of the four elements, followed by another (« the Seasons »), intended to be executed in Aubusson. Gromaire, in 1940, joined Lurçat and Dubreuil. Working alone, meticulously (many drawings are preparatory to the cartoon, painted, and not numbered as with Lurçat), in close collaboration with Suzanne Goubely, who wove all his cartoons, he spent 4 years in Aubusson, devoting all his creative energy to tapestry. At the end of the war, he left Creuse, and would no longer produce cartoons, leaving to Lurçat the place of great initiator of the renewal of tapestry.

»Aubusson» is one of the 5 cartooncartoons designed by Gromaire for the Goubely workshop during the War, and it is emblematic of his style »in stained glass», lush and geometrized. And if we recognize some of the emblematic monuments of Aubusson (the clock tower, the Ste-Croix church ...), which Gromaire then discovers, the city appears cramped, in a harsh and fierce nature (to which the artist has shown particularly sensitive, as evidenced by his many drawings) made of cliffs and tumultuous watercourses.
Interestingly, a copy, re-woven in 1960, was featured on the »France» ocean liner, the only tapestry whose design predates the decoration order; what better symbol of what a medium (tapestry), and a subject (the land of France, its landscapes, its terroirs), vectors of traditions, could simultaneously embody the modernity that the »style France» (Bruno Foucart), and the »France» ocean liner itself carried.

Bibliography:
Le Point, Aubusson and the revival of tapestry, March 1946, ill.
Forms and colors, n°5-6, 1942, ill.

Love of art, French tapestry, 1946, ill. p.185
Jean Lurçat, French Tapestry, Bordas, 1947
J. Cassou, M. Damain, R. Moutard-Uldry, French tapestry and cartoon cartoonists, Tel, 1957
Symposium, Jean Lurçat and the revival of tapestry in Aubusson, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1992
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat, traveling companions and considerable passersby, Felletin Church, 1992, ill. p. 25 (and detail on cover)
Exh. Cat., Gromaire, woven work, Aubusson, Tapestry Museum, 1995, ill. p. 53 (and on cover)
Exh. Cat. The Gobelins manufactory in the first half of the 20th century, Beauvais, National Tapestry Gallery, 1999
Armelle Bouchet Mazas, the France ocean liner, Paris, 2006, ill. p.67
Aubusson, International City of Tapestry, visitor's guide, 2016, ill.p.57