The flame
Portalegre tapestry woven by the Fino workshop.
With its ribbon signed by the artist, No. 2/6.
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, figurative at first, then soon abstract, from the 50s 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 a tireless advocate for 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, with other artists like Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, of those who resolutely oriented wool towards abstraction, lyrical at first, geometric in the 1970s, exploiting different technical aspects of the craft: gradients, beatings, stitched, dotted..
Characteristic abstract cartoon of the artist in the mid-60s: the evocation of the flame, stylized in an aggressive purple, refers to Matégot's interest in industry, technique, but also to the woven transparency games of which he has made himself the champion.
Bibliography :
Exhibition Catalogue Matégot, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1990-1991
