The sun of Tijuana
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshops after the cartoon by Mathieu Matégot.
Signed Bolduc.
Circa 1960.
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 Cartoonists for Tapestry) in 1949, participated in multiple international exhibitions (Matégot, like Lurçat before him, was an indefatigable advocate for tapestry), responded to numerous public commissions, sometimes monumental ("Rouen", 85 m2 for the Seine-Maritime prefecture, 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 of, along with other artists like Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, 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…
Matégot, if he is an avant-garde decorator, a recognized creator of furniture and objects, also created a largely abstract woven work. But it is not a matter of pure abstraction here: it is rather the evocation of a place (there will also be ”Mindanao”, “Santa Barbara”,…), of its climate, thanks to the use of all the means allowed by tapestry: transparencies, gradations, beatings,…
Provenance: Pinton workshop collection
Bibliography :
Exhibition Catalogue Matégot, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1990-1991
