Dragon in the night
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
With its label signed by the artist, No. 1/6.
Circa 1965.
Matégot, first a decorator, then a creator of objects and furniture (an activity he renounced in 1959), met François Tabard in 1945, and gave him his first cartoons, initially figurative, then soon abstract, from the 1950s onwards. He became a member of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painter-Cartoonists of Tapestry) in 1949, participated in multiple international exhibitions (Matégot, like Lurçat before him, was an indefatigable advocate of tapestry), responded to numerous public commissions, sometimes monumental ("Rouen", 85 m2 for the prefecture of Seine-Maritime, but also tapestries for Orly, for the Maison de la Radio, for the IMF...) and produced no less than 629 cartoons until the 1970s. In 1990, the Matégot Foundation for contemporary tapestry was inaugurated in Bethesda, USA. Matégot was part, along with other artists like Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, of those who resolutely oriented wool towards abstraction, initially lyrical, then geometric in the 1970s, exploiting different technical aspects of the craft: gradations, beatings, stitched, pointillist..
The cartoon expresses the usual contrast between shadows and light, typical of the cartoons of the period; the title, however, gives it a more illustrative value, like a fantastic fire-spewing animal (and fire itself) that disperses the darkness.
Bibliography :
Cat. Exp. Matégot, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and Contemporary Tapestry, 1990-1991
Patrick Favardin, Mathieu Matégot, Editions Norma, 2014
