Shadows and Lights
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
With its label signed by the artist.
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..
This tapestry meets Matégot's concerns about the interplay of shadows and/or light, which he often evokes in his titles (Cf. "Summer Light", Millon-Robert sale, 7.11.90, No. 31, reproduced on the cover of the catalogue, "Light Trap" preserved at the Musée Jean Lurçat and de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, and reproduced p. 47 of the exhibition catalogue). Here the cartoon is strongly contrasted, like a ray of light between 2 opaque blocks (but with flaws) and black (but with nuances). To tell the truth, Matégot's entire production plays on these transparencies and superimpositions, as if the light (though fatal to its colors) was striving to traverse the wool.
Provenance: Pinton workshop collection
Bibliography :
Exhibition Catalogue Matégot, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1990-1991
