Marcel GROMAIRE

Gromaire's woven work is modest: 11 cartoons, designed between 1938 and 1944, most of them in Aubusson itself. "His rigorous constructions, his simplifications, his taste for grand composition and great fundamental ideas, his science as a colorist and to sum it all up his supreme quality as a master and craftsman, all this was bound to make him one of the most perfect tapestry weavers of his time," Jean Cassou would say (Cat. Expo. Marcel Gromaire, Paris, Musée National d'art moderne, 1963).

It was Guillaume Janneau, head of the Mobilier National (National Furniture Collection), who commissioned him in 1938, convinced that his style (simplified forms, geometric designs outlined in black, the influence of Cubism, a limited palette, etc.) would be ideally suited to the new aesthetic challenges that tapestry needed to overcome in order to be reborn (simplified color ranges, synthetic cartoons, etc.). He began with a commission on the theme of the four elements, followed by another ("The Seasons"), intended to be executed in Aubusson. In 1940, Gromaire joined Lurçat and Dubreuil there. Working alone, meticulously (many drawings were preparatory to the cartoon, which was painted, unlike Lurçat's numbered cartoons), in close collaboration with Suzanne Goubely, who wove all his cartoons, he spent four years in Aubusson, devoting all his creative energies to tapestry. At the end of the war, he left the Creuse region and would not produce any more cartoons, leaving Lurçat to take the place of great initiator of the revival of tapestry.

"Aubusson" is one of the five cartoons designed by Gromaire for the Goubely workshop during the War, and it is emblematic of his "stained-glass" style, abundant and geometric. And while we recognize some of the emblematic monuments of Aubusson (the clock tower, the Church of the Holy Cross…), which Gromaire was discovering at the time, the town appears cramped, nestled in a harsh and untamed landscape (to which the artist was particularly sensitive, as evidenced by his numerous drawings) made up of cliffs and tumultuous streams.
Interestingly, a copy, rewoven in 1960, appeared on the ocean liner "France," the only tapestry whose design predates the commission for the decoration; What better symbol of how a medium (tapestry), and a subject (the land of France, its landscapes, its terroirs), vectors of traditions, could simultaneously embody the modernity carried by the "French style" (Bruno Foucart), and the ocean liner "France" itself.

Bibliography:
Contemporary Tapestries Lurçat Gromaire, Braun et cie editions, 1943, ill.
Le Point, Aubusson and the Renaissance of Tapestry, March 1946, ill.
Formes et couleurs, no. 5-6, 1942, ill.
L'amour de l'art, la tapisserie Française, 1946, ill. p.185
Jean Lurçat, French Tapestry, Bordas, 1947
J. Cassou, M. Damain, R. Moutard-Uldry, French Tapestry and the Cartoon Painters, Tel, 1957
Colloquium, Jean Lurçat and the Renaissance of Tapestry in Aubusson, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1992
Exhibition Catalog. Jean Lurçat, Fellow Travelers and Considerable Figures, Church of Felletin, 1992, ill. p. 25 (and detail on cover)
Exhibition catalog, Gromaire, woven work, Aubusson, Musée de la tapisserie, 1995, ill. p. 53 (and on cover)
Exhibition catalog, The Gobelins Manufactory in the first half of the 20th century, Beauvais, Galerie nationale de la tapisserie, 1999;
Armelle Bouchet Mazas, the ocean liner France, Paris, 2006, ill. p. 67;
Aubusson, Cité internationale de la tapisserie, visitor's guide, 2016, ill. p. 57